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GAIA-THE LIVING PLANET

Spring/Summer 1990

Volume 10, No. 3 Spring/Summer 1990

The
, Creatine
V}oman Governors State University, University Park, IL 60466

3193

Published under the auspices of the provosts office,
© 1990 governors state university and helen hughes

ISSN 0736 - 4733

STAFF

I lelen E. Hughes, Editor
Suzanne Oliver, Art Director
Barbara Conant, Library Resources
Cynthia Ogorek, Managing Editor
Priscilla Rockwell, Editorial Consultant
Lynne I Iostetter, Word Processing
Linda Kuester, Word Processing
Emily Wasiolek, Editorial consultant
Lynn Ann Lindvig, Editorial Consultant

EDITORIAL BOARD

Glenda Baily-Mershon, Illinois NOW/National Organization for Women, Oak Park, IL

Donna Bandstra, Healthgroup International, Sherman Oaks, CA

Margaret Brady, Social Sciences, Homewood, IL

Rev. Ellen Dohner Livingston, Religion, Unitarian Society of Ponoma Valley, CA

Rita Durrant, League of American Per/women, Doylestown, PA

Deborah Garrelson, Counseling, Muncie, IN

Temmie Gilbert, Theatre/Media, Governors State University

Linda Grace-Kobas, Journalism, University of Buffalo, N.Y.

Harriet Gross, Sociology/Women's Studies, Governors State University

Helene N. Guttman, Biological Sciences, Bethesda, M.D.

Bethe Hagens, Anthropology, Governors State University

Barbara Jenkins, Psychology, Governors State University

Betye Saar, Fine Arts, Hollywood, CA

Terri Schwartz, Psychology, Governors State University

Sara Shumer, Political Theory, Haverford College, PA

Lynn Thomas Strauss, Women's Studies/Parenting, Oak Park, IL

PAGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 Introduction: James Lovelock's GAIA: Reweaving the Web of Life by Helen Hughes

SECTION I - FIVE CONFERENCES ON THE ENVIRONMENT

8 Earth Day, Chicago, April 22, 1990 , Women, Gaia and Ecology by Riane Eisler

11 Conference: International Women's Writing Guild- Washington, D.C.
11 Ringing the Gong by Cynthia Ogorek

14 In My Own Words by Hannelore Hahn

17 Conference: Soviet - American Citizen Summit on the Environment
17 In Moscow: Women - Peace - Ecology by Rosemary Matson

19 Listen the Future Anew! by JoAnn Cannon

21 VideoConference: Corporate America and the Environment

21 Live from Governors State University - Corporate America and the Environment by Sally Pettrilli

23 Conference: Womanquest
23 Lady of Turning by Kendyl Gibbons

23 Declaration of the Four Sacred Things by Starhawk

24 Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations: The Art of Betye and Alison Saar, reviewed by Helen Hughes

26 SECTION II - THE HUMAN-ANIMAL BOND AND THE QUESTION OF ANIMAL RIGHTS

26 The Wonder of Whales by Marilyn Fischbach

29 Factory Farming: Not Mr. MacDonald's Farm by Marcy Gross

32 SECTION III - THE MOVEABLE FEAST

32 GaiaSpeak by Bethe Hagens

35 Poetry by Margaret S. B. White

38 A Report from the Conservation Chair by Catherine Blair

39 Green Holds No Response by Sarah Probst

40 Two Book Reviews of The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution by Carolyn Merchant
40 Reviewed by Lynn Lindvig

43 Reviewed by Margaret S. Matchett

44 Letters To the Editor
46 Editor's Column

The Creative Woman is published three times a year by Governors
State University. We focus on a special topic in each issue, presented
from a feminist perspective. We celebrate the creative achievements of
women in many fields and appeal to inquiring minds. We publish
fiction, poetry, book reviews, articles, photography and original graphics.

Cover Artwork

"Embrace" by Deborah Koff-Chapin

details.

INTROD UCTION

JAMES LOVELOCK'S GAIA:
REWEAVING THE WEB OF LIFE

Part 1: Lovelock's Hypothesis

Do you remember where you were and what you
were doing on the day our astronauts went
bouncing about on the moon, and we saw for the
first time that incredibly beautiful and moving
photograph of our Home — our precious, fragile,
shimmering blue-green-white planet Earth —
hanging like a jewel in the total blackness of
space? I was in my study in Hyde Park and I
thought we human beings had turned a corner,
that a rise in consciousness equal to that of the
Copernican revolution was inevitable. So I
started dating everything from ONE - Day One
of the New Age, day two.. .that lasted about a
month. I couldn't find anyone else who shared
my vision of the turning point in human history
as marked from that image of Earth as seen from
space, so I gave it up and rejoined the majority.
But, what if I was right? that it was a watershed
moment in human consciousness? As the Iro-
quois ask about any important act or decision:
"What does this mean to the 7th generation?"
What will our great-great-great grandchildren
say about us and our wisdom in the late years of
the twentieth century?

Twenty years have passed since that luminous
moment, leading to a joining of the feminist and

ecology movements: ecofeminism, the richest of
the rivers of feminist thought, combining the
spiritual, visionary, holistic worldview and the
latest knowledge base and insights of science.
This issue explores the hypothesis of James
Lovelock, (a British scientist who first published
his Gaia theory in 1969, the book in 1977, paper-
back edition 1982, and his latest, The Ages of Gaia,
in 1988), and some of the implications of his
theory.

Jim Lovelock is a specialist in gas chromotogra-
phy, the inventor of the electron capture detector
and an expert in environmental analysis, a scien-
tist in the tradition of Rachel Carson, gifted with
the ability to see connections that others had
missed. In the early 1960s he was invited by
NASA to help devise ways and means to detect
life on Mars and other planets as NASA was
making its first plans for space probes. Their
design involved looking for life in ways that
would provide evidence that life existed on Mars,
similar to life as we know it on Earth: taking soil
samples, searching for chemicals that would
suggest life processes at work, and so forth. But
Lovelock asked, "Why should we assume that
Martian life will reveal itself by tests based on
Earth conditions?" and then he asked, "What is
life? How can it be recognized?"

However, because science has been divided and
subdivided into small and smaller disciplines, no
one was looking at this question and Lovelock
found a dearth of material. People were studying
small pieces of life, but few were trying to say
what life was. So he set to work. And in the
process of designing an inquiry into life on Mars,
he discovered new relationships on earth that led
him to his GAIA hypothesis. Here is his working
definition:

"Life is an open or continuous system, found
wherever there is an abundant flow of energy,
with a tendency to shape or form itself as it
consumes nutrients and excretes waste, a self-
regulating system operating in a feedback loop."

He concludes that the biota — the sum of all
living things, including plants, animals, and
micro-organisms — not only profoundly affect
the earth's environment, but act to maintain and
enhance life on the planet. His friend William
Golding suggested that he name this idea GAIA,
after the Greek Earth Goddess, Mother of the
Gods.

Lovelock found that the chemistry of the atmos-
phere violates the rules of steady state chemistry,

that a disequilibrium exists that suggested that
the atmosphere is not merely a biological product,
as oxygen often is, but more probably a biologi-
cal construction — "like a cat's fur, or a bird's
feathers, an extension of a living system, de-
signed to maintain a chosen environment." So
GAIA is a complex entity involving the earth's
biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil, operating
in a cybernetic or feedback system to ensure an
optimal environment for life.

Evidence for the theory is based on three main
findings of remarkable stability:

• the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere

• the percentage of salt in the oceans

• the mean temperature of the planet

1. The atmosphere is the key: according to the
laws of chemistry and physics, the gases in a
planet's atmosphere should react to form stable
compounds and settle into an equilibrium, or
steady state. The Martian atmosphere is just such
an equilibrium. Earth's atmosphere is different
because of the continuous injection of gases and
energy into the atmosphere by the planet's plants
and animals. Most important, the amount of
oxygen in the earth's atmosphere remains virtu-
ally constant, at about 21%. If the oxygen level
dropped more than a few percentage points,
many organisms would die. If it should climb as
high as 25%, fires would burn out of control.
What keeps the atmosphere's oxygen content
constant, within this narrow margin that makes
life possible? How has Earth maintained this
vital balance, supporting life?

2. The ocean's salt content, 3.5% by weight, is
also regulated. Five hundred megatons of salt
run off into the oceans every year. Why doesn't
ocean water get saltier? Scientists used to think it
did. Now it is known that salinity remains con-
stant, no matter how many megatons of salt are
added annually. Were the salinity to climb from
3.5% to 4%, most ocean-dwelling organisms
would die. At 6%, virtually all would die.
Lovelock's answer is that since life began the
salinity of the oceans has been under biological
control. Whales, phytoplankton, micro-organisms
and the great coral reefs all seem to play a part in
this complex control system. Lovelock explains
how the complex ocean system of biological
control works.

3. The earth's average surface temperature has
remained relatively constant, between 50 and 68
degrees Fahrenheit, even during the Ice Ages.
This, despite the fact that over the course of 3.5
billion years of life on earth, the sun's output of
energy may have increased by as much as 30%!

Why didn't earth's water freeze? asked Lovelock.
Why didn't it boil away? It seemed inconceiv-
able that chance alone could have so finely
regulated these conditions to keep the planet in
an optimal, hospitable state for life. Just as our
bodies are homeostatic, self-regulating systems,
so that we can adapt and survive our winters or
endure our summers, earth is homeostatic, he
concluded. The biosphere, including the atmos-
phere and the oceans and land, operates as a
living organism, automatically coordinating its
vital systems to compensate for environmental
changes or threats.

For those of you who want a closer and deeper
look at the scientific work undergirding all of
this, see the references following this article. My
guess is that there are many readers who feel
intuitively the truth of Lovelock's thesis. Indeed,
some of you may be saying (and with good
cause) what's so new about this? The Native
Americans have always known it. Marcus Aure-
lius, the Roman stoic, wrote "Always think of the
universe as one living organism, with a single
substance and a single soul," and addressed the
universe thus, "O world, I am in tune with every
note of thy great harmony. For me, nothing is
early, nothing late, if it be timely for thee."
Thoreau felt Earth to be living, and denied a clear
distinction between organic and inorganic parts
of earth. Other thinkers who have postulated
Earth as a living organism include Lewis Thomas
and Gregory Bateson. The farmer's common
sense wisdom has always been, "You take care of
the land and the land will take care of you."

Nevertheless, Lovelock's ideas were met first by
silence and neglect, then derision, from many.
Since the concept appealed to many religious and
ecologically minded folks, this fact further alien-
ated that part of the scientific community that
likes to consider itself hard-nosed. Their reason-
ing (if you can call it that) is that if the mystics
climb on the bandwagon, there must be some-
thing wrong with the wagon. And if an idea
becomes trendy, many scientists have been
trained to look at it with skepticism if not cyni-
cism. But among his admirers are such emi-
nences as Rene Dubos, the microbiologist, Philip
Morrison, the physicist, and Lewis Thomas,
author of Lives of a Cell. Lovelock's theory em-
phasizes such potential selective forces as coop-
eration and symbiosis that are frequently over-
looked by more traditional evolutionary thinkers.
Natural selection does not preclude cooperation
as an evolutionary force along with predation,
competition, etc. Any factor that tends to maxi-
mize birthrates and acts unequally on members
of a population can have evolutionary

impact.. .i.e., "cooperative" members of a popula-
tion could be selected for. The fact that his theo-
ries appeal to religious folks (or ecofeminists)
surprised Lovelock but was no problem; he sees
it as a great organizing principle to bring to-
gether people who don't normally talk to each
other: biologists, geochemists, atmospheric scien-
tists, to ask profound questions about how we
got here and how the system works.

A paradigm shift is in process. Fifty years have
passed since Heisenberg, Bohr and Einstein made
Newtonian thinking obsolete, but popular con-
sciousness is only now catching up. Only in
recent years with such books as The Tao of Phys-
ics, The Turning Point and Uncommon Wisdom by
Fritjof Capra have the social-philosophical impli-
cations of the new physics become clearer. In
Capra's books he has argued that the universe
can only be understood as a cosmic dance of
unity, beyond the world of opposites, and that
this historical moment can only be understood as
a great shift away from Newtonian concepts and
laws to a new understanding of dynamic interac-
tion. The new paradigm is now emerging in
various places simultaneously.

What is our role as human beings if the GAIA
hypothesis is correct? Lovelock writes:

"As the transfer of power to our species pro-
ceeds, our responsibility for maintaining homeo-
stasis grows with it, whether we are conscious of
the fact or not."

"Unlike Stone Age Man, we now have the capac-
ity to collect, store and process information, then
use it to interact with the environment."

The Chinese character for CRISIS combines the
ideographs for danger and opportunity. We are
indeed at such a crisis, such a turning point,
confronting both danger and opportunity. Will
enough of us understand soon enough to prevent
the destruction of the tropical rain forests which
send essential oxygen into the atmosphere? To
prevent the drilling and destruction of the off-

shore continental plates which provide the micro-
organisms that may regulate the ocean's salinity?
"To what extent is our collective intelligence also
a part of Gaia? Do we, as a species, constitute a
Gaian nervous system, a brain which can con-
sciously anticipate environmental changes? Our
increasingly subtle and complex communication
network has vastly increased Gaia's range of
perception. She is now, through us, awake and
aware of herself.. .It may be that the destiny of
human kind is to become tamed, so that the
fierce, destructive, and greedy forces of tribalism
and nationalism are fused into a compulsive urge
to belong to the commonwealth of all creatures
which constitute Gaia."

Industrial civilization will die hard. But changes
are coming. WE caused them. As planet manag-
ers, the human race has far to go. We still don't
know enough! It's too late to be smug, self-
satisfied and ignorant; but it's not too late to
start. It is now our moral responsibility to be
intelligent. We can't predict how the biosphere
will react. Only one thing is sure: Gaia will do
something. Even earthquakes and volcanoes are
related to biological forces. Species either adapt
to environmental changes, or die. We must all
become earth system scientists, understanding
that studies of climate can only be meaningful if
the entire biosphere — forests, oceans, bacteria,
atmosphere, humans — are all studied together
in interaction. We are all cells in her body.

"The most beautiful object I have ever seen in a
photograph, in all my life, is the planet Earth
seen from the distance of the moon, hanging
there in space, obviously alive. Although it
seems at first glance to be made up of innumer-
able separate species of living things, on closer
examination every one of its working parts,
including us, is interdependently connected to
all the other working parts. It is, to put it one
way, the only truly closed ecosystem any of us
knows about. To put it another way, it is an
organism. It came alive, I shall guess, 3.8 billion
years ago today, and I wish it a happy birthday
and a long life ahead, for our children and their
grandchildren and theirs and theirs." (- Lewis
Thomas)

Part II: Interviewing Scientists

It's hard to induce most academic scientists to
discuss Lovelock. They seem to be embarrassed
by him and made uncomfortable by his popular-
ity, which makes him suspect. In my search for
opinions, criticism or analysis, I most frequently
heard "don't know anything about him," or

"never heard of him,". ..and I thought I heard the
implication "...and don't want to." Their reluc-
tance and distaste are perfectly expressed by
Vicky Meller, Ph.D., biology, who was kind
enough to respond with this comment:

"I know nothing about the Gaia Hypothesis,
but what I've heard bothers me. Why must we
evoke what is patently a theologic argument to
induce people to do what should be common
sense, to take care of the planet? The ends
appear the same - you convince people that
their actions have far reaching consequences
because of the interdependence of systems
within the biosphere - as those touted by con-
servationists, ecologists, population biologists
and epidemiologists for dozens of years. I feel
it is desperately important that the findings of
independent researchers on the environment be
listened to, and their warnings heeded. I feel it
equally important that this crucial area of
research not become dominated by a pseudo-
science. Gaia is trendy and seems to be market-
able to a certain section of the population. Too
bad the facts were never good enough to
capture the imagination of those people.

I'd certainly rather have people running around
talking about Gaia and recycling their trash
than unaware of our environmental crisis. But
do you have to distance an issue from reality
before it receives public support in the U.S.
today?

For ten years our government has rewritten
reality on political, social and environmental
issues (to say nothing of the economy). Has
that negated the value of researched findings?
Is Gaia the most accurate representation of the
biosphere that will stick in the American mind
in 1990?

The biosphere is a defined thing with certain
properties. It is fragile, endangered, and should
be respected. Gaia is a make-believe thing. If it
changes the world for the better, I'm all for it."

As I spent a day walking the corridors and
knocking on doors, asking my colleagues to
enlighten me: "Do you know any evidence for
the theory of Lovelock?" a few generous souls
were willing to chat awhile.

Mohammed Kishta, Ph.D., Science Education,
spoke in terms of an Islamic perspective on
science. "The Greeks tried to imprison the world
to isolate it from the Creator, so as to study it
objectively. I believe their efforts failed, and
nature cannot be independent from its Creator. In
Islam there is no division between science and
faith. Islam challenges us to find a single instance

of disharmony or irregularity in nature. If Lov-
elock considers nature as purposeful, orderly and
good, and if man is or could be an agent of good
will to all living things, then I agree with him."

And one of my colleagues said, off the record, "If
there is a system like this, it will have to get rid
of us."

Another, quoting Lord Eric Ashby and adapting
John Donne, said "Any tree's death diminishes
me." "We are a spoiled, wasteful nation.. .a
throwaway society."

Then I found Jon Mendelson, Ph.D., zoology,
resident ecologist, in his office and found what
I'd been looking for. We found a quiet lounge
space and talked at length.

"There's still a basic tension between economic
development and ecological responsibility. The
man-centered vision of the world is total eco-
nomic development: streets, houses, streetlights,
shopping malls. But we have to limit growth. The
non-statement of our video conference was that
growth and expansion are not good. The point
wasn't made that limits to growth is the only
way to go."

This is a man who lives his understanding. A city
boy, he grew up in Manhattan, was trained at
Harvard, coming into ecology via sociology,
anthropology and social psychology. After Har-
vard he entered Columbia Law School, and one
fine day as he was walking to a class (which he
"creatively hated") he saw his first blue jay at age
22. He dropped out of law school, got a Peterson
field guide and a bike, and began to study birds
in Central Park. He moved to Wisconsin, studied
chemistry, biology and did his Ph.D. in ichthyol-
ogy. The period of 1965-1972 was the time of
student activism. Aldo Leopold was influential
and those "radical hippie freaks living in the
country."

"Now I'm living in the country in a farm hand-
built by a Bohemian immigrant in the early
1900s. We have no plumbing or central heating.
We hand pump water (it takes 40 pumps to bring
up five gallons of water) and have an outhouse.
Our life is one of minimal impact on the environ-
ment and maximum human input. It's labor
intensive, exactly what I want. Our big organic

garden, 3000 square feet, is a 'dry garden,' using
rain water, compost, and no pesticides and no
herbicides." The conversation turned to the water
table: is there a problem?

"There is a very serious problem, a big draw-
down of the aquifer. Well-drillers are required to
state the character of the soil, the substrate. In the
past, surficial layers were reported. Now, they
drill 180 feet into bedrock to find water. Streams
go dry, no longer fed by springs, which have
dried up. Ninety percent of Deer Creek is treated
effluent from the sewage plant. How many small
sewage treatment plants are filtering into the
water tables? It's a chronic, slow contamination
of the aquifer, and it's nationwide."

Dr. Mendelson admits that he has an opportunity
that is not available to the vast majority of people
who are trapped by urban sprawl, and adds,
"People, even with the best of intentions, are
often locked into behavior destructive of the
environment by economic forces seemingly
beyond anyone's control." About the rainforest,
he says, "The moisture that sustains it is pumped
back into the atmosphere by the trees themselves.
Remove the forest and the cycle is broken. All
that water will run off the land, clogging rivers
and streams with the products of erosion. The
soils here are basic in pH, so that water passing
through them removes silica leaving high con-
centrations of iron and aluminum. Only the
organic matter produced by the forest keeps
them loose and friable. Remove the trees and the
soil compacts to a cement-like consistency, use-
less for agriculture. One solution is being at-
tempted in Costa Rica (by David Janzen), a large
scale effort to balance legitimate economic needs
of human community with the maintenance of
natural ecosystems in all their incredible diver-
sity."

It's refreshing to see this colleague; with his sun-
bleached hair, and his year-round tanned face,
his ready-to-go outdoor gear, he seems like
someone about to take you on a white-water

canoe trip in Maine. He grew up on stories like
"Freddie the Pig," stories about animals that
could talk, and their gruff, benevolent farmer.
Now he has become that farmer.

He teaches ornithology, aquatic ecology, plant
ecology. ..and statistics. On his own time he
gardens and plays the piano (studies with Art
Hodes) has three daughters, and sells the pro-
duce that he and his wife raise at the Co-Op.
"Life must be universally present," he concludes.
"How could you stop it? It grows like weeds
wherever the conditions are right. Will humans
disappear? It doesn't matter. We're not the whole
show."

The rest of this issue fills you in on the many
conferences and events that surrounded Earth
Day, including both the dimensions of public
policy and personal experience; the linguistic
roots of Gaia; poetry and two reviews of an
important book, The Death of Nature by Carolyn
Merchant. Many friends helped us to assemble
these pieces; special thanks to Jane Heckman
who recorded Riane Eisler and sent the tape to
us, and to Marylu Raushenbush who attended
the Soviet- American Citizen Summit II in
Moscow in January and recruited the papers read
there by Rosemary Matson and JoAnn
Cannon.Look for our next issue in which we'll
begin a new feature, "Life Stories."

HEH

For further reading:

Gribbin, John (ed.) The Breathing Planet. A New Scientist
Guide. New York: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1986.

Lovelock, J.E. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1979.

Lovelock, James. The Aqes of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living
Earth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.

Myers, Norman (ed.) Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management.
New York: Anchor Press /Doubleday & Company, 1984.

SECTION I

FIVE CONFERENCES ON THE ENVIRONMENT

EARTH DAY
CHICAGO, APRIL 22, 1990

Women, Gaia and Ecology

Riane Eisler

My subject is "Women, Gaia and Ecology: Our
Partnership with Nature " and I'm going to be
talking about connections. Connections have
been the theme of my work. And those of you
who know the The Chalice and the Blade know
why I've been invited here. It deals with the
ecological movement in a much larger context, in
a context of a major social shift. This shift is from
what I call the Dominator to a Partnership way
of living. And I'm also going to put what's
happening today in an even bigger context —
the context of thousands of years of our cultural
evolution, in terms of very important information
we're now reclaiming from archaeology. What
we today call an ecological consciousness, in
other words, rather than a conquest and domina-
tion way of dealing with nature, a way of seeing
nature with respect and even reverence, is really
not new. It's a very ancient tradition. The British
archaeologist James Mellaart calls it veritable
revolution in archaeology, and we are finding out
about this ancient heritage. And I don't think it's

coincidental that we're reclaiming this knowl-
edge now, because we need to have it. Our
Partnership with Nature is the theme of Gaia
which is the name that the Greeks gave to the
Goddess of Earth and the Mother of the Gods,
who has come down to us as Mother Earth,
Mother Nature. And it's not coincidental that
today we're finding that the idea of Gaia was not
invented by the Greeks. We're finding out the
worship of Gaia is very ancient.

Some of you may be familiar with the theory
called the Gaia hypothesis; it's the scientific
theory proposed by two biologists, Lynn Mar-
gulis and James Lovelock. What they're propos-
ing is that the earth is not an inanimate object to
be conquered and exploited, to be used and
abused, that it's a living system that gives life,
that sustains life, that nurtures life. Now the
fascinating thing is that this revolutionary scien-
tific theory is actually an update of the belief
system of an earlier society which saw the earth
as a living goddess to be revered, to be respected
in the same way as they saw the body of woman.
Not as an object to be abused and used, but as
sacred and life giving and life sustaining, to be
revered and to be respected. So I said to you that
I was going to talk about connections, and I'm
going to tell you that what we begin to see as we
look at this ecological movement in this larger
context is a shift in how we relate to ourselves, to
our bodies, to other people, to other nations and
also to nature, of course. If we look at the whole
system shift we see that there are connections
and, as important as it is for us to recycle, as
important as it is for us not to put any more
aerosol out into the biosphere, that by itself will
not do it. As a matter of fact, that is not sustain-
able by itself, because what we're talking about is
a whole social system and you can't graft a
sound ecological balance to a fundamentally
unbalanced system which has been based on the
notion that men should be socialized for con-
quest and domination, be it of women, other
men, other nations or nature.

Men are clearly capable of caring and of nurtur-
ing, and we see it every day with the new fa-
thers. It's not an issue of women against men or
men against women, but if s an issue of social
structure that affects everything in our lives, and
it's a issue of no longer relegating the caring and
the cleaning to one half of humanity. Clearly men
can be just as nurturing as women and clearly

men can also clean! One of the things I want to
share with you is something that I have to say
but only as a half-joke which is that women
would not have created nuclear waste with no
idea of where to put it! The problem is that we've
got to start bringing up both our daughters and
our sons to be ecologically responsible at home,
because otherwise we perpetuate this nonsense of
men feeling inclined to make a mess, be it at
home or on the planet, because somebody's
going to come along (somebody female!) and
clean it up. That's a stereotype. Are you begin-
ning to see some of the connections?

There are very important partnership trends in
our society today and a shift toward a view of
the earth as something not to be exploited but to
be treated with respect, in partnership if you will.
That's a very important part of it. But that's not
enough. Because it will not be rooted in the
whole belief system or in the institutional system
or in the ways that we live in our daily lives on
this planet. So we really need to take a look now
at some of the specific things, and one of them of
course is the politics of housework and that's not
just a peripheral woman's issue — that is a hu-
man issue, an ecological issue, dealing with the
whole issue of the stereotypical socialization of
boys for domination and conquest, the whole
image of men who have to suppress their caring
parts. And that, too is a very important part of
this social shift from domination to partnership.
And we really need to get away from the sexual
stereotypes because you cannot graft ecological
consciousness onto a way of living that's funda-
mentally unbalanced, that's based on the domi-
nation of one-half of humanity over the other.
After all, that's all that men and women are —
we are the two halves of humanity.

And we also have to look again at the whole
issue of rape. Because the rape of our planet and
the rape of women are part of the same domina-
tor system, aren't they? And it's a suicidal system
because at a certain level of technological devel-
opment, and we're rapidly approaching it, the
mix of a dominator society and high technology,
takes us to a evolutionary dead end. But the
problem is not technology, the problem is how
we use technology, and whether it's in a context
of a dominator or a partnership society.

I also want to say to you that we hear a great
deal about honoring the diversity of nature, and
respecting that diversity, and not killing the
dolphins and the elephants, but if we do not
honor and respect our diversity as humans,
beginning with the most fundamental difference
which is the difference between women and men,

then we don't have a system that honors diver-
sity. What we must try to break away from today
is a social system that is based on ranking: the
ranking of men over women; men over men; of
nation over nation; or man over nature. And
what we're trying to move towards, and we've
come quite a way already, is a partnership
model, beginning with the most fundamental
difference in our species, which is the difference
between female and male, without which we
couldn't go on. Difference is not equated with
inferiority or superiority but, on the contrary,
difference is honored and celebrated. So the
partnership society is not the society where
everything is the same. It's a society of equality
of opportunity but not of sameness, contrary to a
dominator society in which conformity is de-
manded even in how you think. 1984 gave you
the scenario for the dominator society. Not
coincidentally, Orwell's 1984 was a male-domi-
nated society. Now again I want to say this is not
a issue of women against men; whatever you
take away from my talk today, that's not it.
That's not what it's about. It's about valuing our
differences beginning with that fundamental
difference, then we can value racial difference
and we can value cultural difference and we can
truly value the splendor of the variety of the
natural habitat on this planet.

Now, these are early societies that we are now
rediscovering, that I deal with in some detail in
The Chalice and the Blade, these findings of archae-
ologists James Melaart, and Marija Gimbutas at
UCLA, and Nicolas Platon who excavated the
Minoan civilization of Crete which is the last
known historical civilization which was based on
the partnership model. This information, which is
causing a big furor in the archaeological commu-
nity today, challenges so many of the old as-
sumptions; this information challenges the story
that domination and conquest are inevitable, that
male dominance and warfare are inevitable. This
information is very important to us today be-
cause it verifies so much of what so many of us
have really known inside — that we don't have
to live in this miserable and tense way. Look at
what's happening in society today, for example,
with millions of people saying, "we all seem to
come from dysfunctional families." Now of
course that's the dominator family. It's very
appropriate for the dominator model of society,
isn't it, but it's totally inappropriate for the kind
of society that we need, which is a partnership
society and so this awareness of dysfunctional
families is a tremendously important partnership
trend.

Now I don't mean to say that there's no domina-
tor resistance. There's tremendous dominator
resistance, but the important thing is that once
we begin to understand the connections, it isn't
all such a confusing mush. We begin to see that,
yes, there is a relationship between rape and wife
beating and child beating and the rape of nature
and warfare and the fact that we're on the brink
of destroying our planet; that these dominator
ways don't work, and a lot of what's happening
in our time is not random and disconnected. Be it
in our attempts to change our family relations,
particularly in our attempt to move more toward
a partnership between women and men, be it in
our understanding that the nuclear age is obso-
lete, or be it in our increasing understanding that
we have to have a whole new way of living with
nature. In partnership. So this information is
empowering. It has been for me. And it has been
for many other people who are able to use it to
find intervention points, who are able to think
now in a more systems way and who also now
have the information that we can create a less
tense, more balanced, sustainable, future. We did
it once before. There was a shift in our pre-

history from the ancient partnership which
archeology is now documenting, to a dominator
society. But it (the dominator model) has lasted
only for a relatively short time in evolutionary
terms, less than 5,000 years. In evolutionary time,
that's very little. We could think of it in terms of
the "dominator detour." It's a detour that could
take us to a evolutionary dead end. But we also
have the realistic possibility not to break down
but to break through. Not to go back to the so-
called good old days, but to use the best modern
technology in the context of a partnership society
so that we can in fact construct for ourselves and
our children a far more satisfying, more respect-
ful and sustainable way of living in partnership,
not only with nature, but with one another. I
thank you.

Riane Eislcr is an internationally known scholar in peace and
feminist issues, a futurist, a lecturer, an attorney, and
codirector of the Center for Partnership Studies. She is the
author of Dissolution: No Fault Divorce, Marriage, and the
Future of Women, The Equal Rights Handbook, and her most
well known book, The Chalice and the Blade.

Conference: International Women's Writing Guild

Washington D.C.

RINGING THE GONG
Cynthia Ogorek

The worst blizzard of the winter hit in late Febru-
ary, the morning I left for the International
Women's Writing Guild conference in Washing-
ton, D.C. However, my before-dawn trek was
rewarded some 800 miles east and south of here
by sunshine and early daffodils outside the B&B
where I stayed.

The bigger reward for the effort, however, was
the conference itself and the National Museum of
Women in the Arts where it was held.

The conference was titled "Ringing the Gong:
Writing to Change the World/The Environment."
About one hundred women, mostly from the east
coast, gathered there to find out how we could
improve our writing when it comes to environ-
mental issues.

We started the day in the Museum's pink, white
and gray auditorium, with exercises to flex the
mental muscles. As the audience relaxed, we
offered our comments which included local
projects such as home sales parties for environ-
mentally safe products and stories about how our
children are reacting to the realities of toxic waste
dumps and acid rain.

Lunch was buffet-style. On the mezzanine, in an
environment of pink and white marble and
enormous crystal chandeliers, we met informally
to exchange "war stories" and some success
stories about how things had improved at least in
our neighborhoods, if not globally.

The afternoon session was billed as a "pot-
pourri," and the highlight was the welcoming
speech given by Hannelore Hahn, executive
director and founder of IWWG. The speech in its
entirety appears in these pages and I hope it will
inspire you, as it has me, to "forage."

To forage, as a writer and as a citizen of the
world, for the words and ideas that will convince
those not already convinced that every day is
Earth Day.

EXERCISES TO DEVELOP WRITING
AWARENESS

How does a writer get started? How does she
make sure her readers understand her concerns
about the state of our environment?

One of the most valuable sessions in that respect
was the presentation by L. W. Peat O'Neil,
assistant to the editor of the Washington Post Style
section. O'Neil also writes a twice-weekly col-
umn on volunteering and teaches writing.

Peat O Neil

She has developed three exercises to get the
creative juices flowing in writers, both the profes-
sionals and those who simply take pleasure in
writing letters to the editors. For the conference,
she tailored the exercises to fit writing about the
environment.

Our goal as environmental writers, she said, was
to get through to editors and ultimately to the
people who wreck our environment.

"There is a responsibility to bring other people
along with us," she said. Writers can get people
to change. We just have to be creative.

Exercise 1. Getting the vocabulary.

Take a few quiet minutes and write down every
word or phrase you associate with earth and
nature.

Some of the audience's responses were: biode-
gradable, harmony, partnership with the earth,
serenity, generation and renewal, trees, water,
symbiotic relationship, the notion of being
grounded or centered.

Save your list and add to it.

"Use the list to charge you up," she said, when
you write to change the environment.

Exercise 2. Stepping Stones.

Try to remember six or seven events in your life
that had to do with your relationship to the
environment. Do you camp? Did you make
firefly rings as a child? (Even the not-so-pretty
memories can be useful.) Do you have a favorite
tree? Have you participated in an Earth Day
celebration?

This exercise will help you focus your thoughts
and ideas about the environment and the issues
of the day. It will also increase your future
awareness of nature and your spiritual participa-
tion with the environment.

Exercise 3. Noticing.

Describe the environment for someone who
thinks of the earth as something to be exploited
or decimated.

This final exercise will encourage you to harness
the vocabulary and anecdotes of the previous
two in ways that will help your readers visualize
your concerns and solutions.

Sometimes, said O'Neil, you have to "treat the
corporations like children who need to be
trained."

of life on earth in the 21st century.

For more information about the series and, in
particular, how it can be used in the classroom,
contact Anne Blackburn, Outreach Coordinator,
"Race to Save the Planet," WGBH Educational
Foundation, 125 Western Avenue, Boston, MA
02134.

THE ALLIANCE TO SAVE ENERGY

1725 K Street, N.W., Suite 914 , Washington, D.C. 20006

Carol Mulholland, Director of Communications

The Alliance is a non-profit coalition of government,
business, consumer and labor leaders dedicated to increasing
the efficiency of energy use. They conduct research and pilot
projects and use this information to formulate policy initia-
tives and to conduct educational programs in the areas of
environment, affordable housing, competitiveness, national
security and economic development.

AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR AN ENERGY-EFFICIENT
ECONOMY

1001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 535

Washington, D.C. 20036

Marc Ledbetter, Senior Associate

Offers a catalog of their publications regarding energy
conservation as well as a pamphlet explaining their work.

A POTPOURRI OF SOURCES OF INFORMA-
TION ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Besides networking among the writers, the
afternoon session gave us the opportunity to
gather resources for writing about the environ-
ment. We heard from representatives of the
many environmental agencies at work in the
country. They explained their goals and the types
of research material they made available to the
public.

The first speaker was Anne Blackburn, National
Outreach Coordinator of WGBH-TV in Boston.
She presented video-clips from "Race to Save The
Planet," a series of 10 one-hour programs that
will be broadcast this fall on public television
stations throughout the country.

The series is the cornerstone of public television's
Operation Earth campaign, she explained. The
campaign is a "multifaceted" effort to focus
attention on the environment.

The concept for the programs came out of
Worldwatch Institute's "State of the World"
reports and will feature programs on population
growth, soil erosion, deforestation, climate
changes induced by human activity and indi-
viduals around the world who are making the
critical decisions that will determine the quality

AMERICAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION

1730 North Lynn Street, #610, Arlington, Virginia 22209
Dianne Eppler, Director of Operations

AUDUBON NATURALIST SOCIETY

801 Pennsylvania S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003

Connie Mahan, Grass Roots Coordinator

Pamphlet available regarding public policy, activism, science
and education. Also a bimonthly newsletter called "Activ-
ist."

BETTER WORLD SOCIETY

1100 17th Street, N.W., Suite 502, Washington, D.C. 20036
Glen Olds, President

CONCERNED CITIZENS FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY OF
SANTA FE

P.O. Box 1273, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504

Mary Lou Cook, private citizen

Ms. Cook delivered an address which explained her group's
tactics in preventing the construction of a nuclear waste
dump in the Santa Fe area.

THE ENERGY CONSERVATION COALITION

1525 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
Nicholas A. Fedoruk, Director

EARTHSTEWARDS NETWORK

6202 Seminole Place, Berwyn Heights, Maryland 20740

Ted Lefkowitz, Urban Peace Trees Project Coordinator

Sponsors an international exchange program for kids which
teaches them about the environment and how other coun-
tries approach the problems.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY STUDY INSTITUTE

122 C Street, N.W., #700, Washington, D.C. 20001

Beth Nalker. Fact sheet available describing how it keeps
Congress informed about environmental issues.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND

1616 P Street, N.W., Suite 150, Washington, D.C. 20036
Lois Epstein, Environmental Engineer

GLOBAL TOMORROW COALITION

1325 G Street, N.W., Suite 915, Washington, D.C. 20005-3104
Terry D'Addio, Director, Management Services
Newsletter, 'Interaction"

GREEN LIBRARY

1918 Bonita Avenue, Berkeley, California 94704

Green Library provides ecological and environmental
literature to people in areas hit by ecological crisis. It also
promotes education and public commitment by assisting
with the establishment of ecological libraries in those areas.
Green Library's goals are to establish a network of environ-
mental libraries, to promote ecological education and to
participate in initiatives designed to improve the quality of
life. The organization is looking for groups to sponsor and/
or house such libraries and for donations of appropriate
books and literature.

GREENPEACE

1436 U Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009

Blair Palese, Media Department

Publishes "FutureFile," a newsletter and "Greenpeace
News," releases about Greenpeace activities and events.

NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION

1400 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-2266

Ann Krumboltz, Director, Earth Day Programs

Dena Leibman, Office of Legislative Affairs

Among other things, this group publishes "Conservation 90"
every three weeks when Congress is in session in order to
keep its members informed about legislative action on
environmental issues.

NATIONAL WOOD ENERGY ASSOCIATION

1730 N. Lynn Street, Suite 610, Arlington, Virginia 22209

S. Rupp, U.S. Export Council for Renewable Energy

BIOLOGUE, the group's magazine, publishes industry news,
biomass energy program reports and new technology
information.

NATIONAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL

1350 New York Avenue, N.W., #300, Washington, D.C. 20012
Jessica Landman, Attorney

THE NATURE CONSERVANCY

1815 N. Lynn Street, Arlington, Virginia 22209

Ron Gaetz, Media Relations Manager

Pamphlet and magazine available. The organization sponsors
an international program (with local chapters) to protect rare
plants and animals. It finds the money to buy endangered
areas and hold them until proper care or management can be
found.

SOLAR ENERGY INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION

1730 N. Lynn Street, Suite 610, Arlington, Virginia 22209
Linda Ladas, Director of Programs
Sandy Rupp, Manager/Editor, Newsletter
Offers Catalog of Nenewable Energy Publications.

U.S. PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP

215 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003

Ellen H. Taggart, Assistant to Executive Director

Publishes U.S. Pirg Citizen Agenda, a quarterly, which covers
various state and national organizations in regard to
environmental issues.

U.S. EXPORT COUNCIL FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY

12713 Gordon Boulevard, #86, Woodbridge, Virginia 22192

This is an umbrella organization for U.S. renewable energy
industries associations. It promotes renewable energy
exports such as alcohol fuels, biomass, geothermal, hydro-
power, photo voltaics, solar thermal, wind and wood.
Information for businesses attempting to export such
products or services.

WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE

1776 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

Magazine, pamphlet. Purpose is to inform policymakers and
general public about interdependence of world economy and
its environmental support systems.

WorldWIDE News

World Women in Environment

1250 24th Street, N.W., 4th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20037

Purpose is to help women at all levels of society participate
in the protection of the environment and in the management
of natural resources. To this end they publish the above-
mentioned newsletter, are establishing a worldwide network,
educating the public and policymakers, promoting the
inclusion of women and their environmental perceptions in
the design and implementation of development policies, and
generally mobilizing and supporting women involved in
these activities.

Conference: International Women's Writing Guild

Washington D.C.

IN MY OWN WORDS

Hannelore Hahn

U*MW

We were in the right place at the right time with the
"Ringing the Gong: Writing to Change the World/the
Environment" conference at the National Museum of
Women in the Arts on February 24, 1990 in Wash-
ington, D.C. It was an electrifying event, comprising
100 attendees and 25 representatives of major envi-
ronmental organizations.

It is a first for the International Women's Writing
Guild — taking on an issue: the issue of the environ-
ment. And because of that, I felt I myself needed to
ring the gong.

Here are my words of welcome:

I am honored to welcome you to this Environ-
mental Forum and to the Guild. I know you
share with me the desire to move toward solu-
tions pertaining to our environment. We are all
gathered here in accord on this and wish for the
same outcome.

Many of you, however, do not know each other.
Hence, one of the purposes of this gathering is, of
course, to further the network and to strengthen
our cause.

Many of you, also, may not know much about
the network which called this convening. Allow
me, therefore, to say a few words about The
International Women's Writing Guild, which, in
turn, will impact on this afternoon and our
shared goals.
14

First, I will say something about women.
I feel that women are greatly privileged to have
been born at a time which allows us to be part of
a revolution or — as I prefer to call it — an evolu-
tion. It is an evolution which has led us first and
foremost in these past two decades towards a
new sense of self. And it is this honing of a sense
of self — as a woman and as a person — which, as
you will see, intimately and importantly connects
the IWWG with what has been happening to
women's consciousness.

And this connection, in the case of the IWWG,
has to do with writing.

The Guild has always supported the writing of
personal experience. Not only from the point of
literature, but essentially and foremost for the
honing of that sense of self. Ever since the Guild
was founded in 1976, it has been an open door to
any woman who wished, through writing, to re-
experience, to re-define herself and her life
through writing and to move on. In this way, the
Guild contributes importantly and lastingly to
the betterment of personal as well as social health
and to the personal and professional empower-
ment of women.

And this kind of deep inner empowerment
brings courage.

And courage leads me to mention leadership. I
think we will all agree that there are too many
people in leadership positions today who have
not been part of this inner cleansing. And by not
having gone through this process, these people
act in reactive ways, projecting old personal
wounds into subjects that call for adult, mature
and enlightened solutions. Such people are also
adept at hiding their immature selves behind
standard behavior of so-called objectivity, so-
called impartiality and by pulling rank.

Which leads me to a documentary I recently saw
on television about the so-called "new gold" in
Alaska. The new gold being ice. The film showed
men hacking away at icebergs, loading huge
chunks of glacial "gold" into their trawlers and
businessmen talking happily about how much
better vodka tastes with glacial ice and touting
other products such as shampoo, supposedly
much improved by the newly harvested ingredi-
ent. To give further substantiation to this plun-
der, a representative of the state of Alaska, the
man who gives out the ice harvesting permits,
said that this was good for Alaska.

No one brought out the obvious fact that if you
keep on harvesting the glacial ice, you may
contribute towards a rapid and catastrophic

global warming, producing a flood which would
make the most dire predictions about the end of
our world come quickly true.

But, even if this fact had been mentioned, would
it have stopped the men in the trawlers? This is a
question.

As representatives of environmental organiza-
tions, you all know a lot of facts and I am sure
you have experienced, and will experience in the
future, the great frustration vis-a-vis well-posi-
tioned opponents, whose perceptions are mired
in departmentalized thinking, who cannot see a
relationship of one thing to another, who cannot,
or do not want to see the forest for the trees and
whose often well disguised immature selves
insist on the bottom line: personal gain, immedi-
ate profit and the status quo. What is it then that
will make the difference?

Quite some time ago, I was asked by Professor
Gerald Holton, a physicist at Harvard University,
to translate The Scientific Correspondence of
Albert Einstein. The letters were then on deposit
at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton
and, before transferring the correspondence to
Israel, which Einstein had stipulated in his will, a
translation of them was initiated. It was a fasci-
nating work and took me into the first two
decades of our twentieth century when scientists
were excitedly and openly communicating with
each other via letters. One of the questions, or in-
jokes of the time was: Does God play dice? In
other words, is the world happenstance, or is
there order and purpose in the universe? That
was the question. Max Born was a physicist with
whom Einstein had corresponded frequently and
at one point in going through their letters, I
noticed a cooling off in their relationship — and
then I came to this pivotal letter in which Ein-
stein says to Born:

'My dear Born: As far as God playing dice is
concerned, I believe in an ordered universe and
in an energy that is related to that universe. But
my approach in finding that order and that
energy that is related to that order is in a wildly
chaotic way. You, my dear Born, do not believe
in an ordered universe, or in an energy related to
it. But you approach chaos in a very orderly
fashion.'

Apples and Pears. If we translate the God play-
ing dice question of that day into our present day
question of the environment, it is still the same:
apples and pears. From that vantage point,
humanity has not changed. There were always
apples and pears, believers and non-believers,
hawks and doves. Therefore, if the environment
is mother nature, which it is, then it is female.

And it is the feminine which is being raped and
up for grabs by that other energy. I am putting it
crassly, but these two energies — male and female,
apples and pears- -are again and still the main
players in our current drama. In other words, if
we are to look at the subject of the environment
in the largest possible perspective, long before, or
alongside the quantification of pollution, or the
identification of toxic waste, we must see our
dilemma in the very largest sense — as an enact-
ment and re-enactment of two opposite forces:
the linear, warrior male and the nurturing,
cyclical female. Or call it what you will.

Now here we are, a bunch of women and some
enlightened men. My talk today will not address
the long-range question of how do we strengthen
the feminine side in men (which certainly is an
evolution that is yet to come), but for the mo-
ment, my question is: How do we get into the
game with the present players, without becoming
one of them? Or, how do we create a position of
strength that will be counted by the players even
though we are not one of them?

I have an answer for the latter. The answer is
numbers. Numbers have always weighed in
politically and women have always been gather-
ers. Anthropologically, we were the ones who
gathered seeds, grains, berries. We always gath-
ered. We know how to do that. So, let's forage. I
know there are millions of voices who have to be
gathered and who have not been heard. These
voices, which have been silent and silenced,
certainly during the 80's, are in our camp. They
are our constituency. We will gather and in this
decade, we will find.

And now, let me take you back to the year 1963
for a moment. That was the year President
Kennedy was shot. Everybody knows that. But if
I am not mistaken, that was also the year a book
came out: The Feminine Mystique, by Betty
Friedan. I remember hearing about this book and
what it was about. But I did not read it. I was at
the time a single working mother hoping to re-
marry. Yet, thirteen years later, that same single
working mother founded The International
Women's Writing Guild. (Still didn't read the
book and still unmarried.)

Why do I mention this? I mention it because it
seems to me to be an excellent example of a case
where information is available but because of
personal circumstances, or of not being ready, it
is seemingly not absorbed. Yet, subliminally,
something did happen in the course of time.

The information about the environment is on our
side. Whether it is readily accepted, or even
actively opposed, this should not unsettle us,

because, as in the example just cited, conscious-
ness raising facts seep in subliminally.

Perhaps, in the large scheme of things, women's
consciousness had to be raised first. And now,
after almost a quarter of a century, a
consciousness raising on the environment on the
part of all of humanity is next.

One more thing: The environment is not relative.
Actually, the recognition of this, seeing it this
way, rings in a wondrous new beginning. It rings
in the re-discovery and the re-acceptance of laws:
natural laws. And of order: universal order. This
is not unlike what Einstein wrote to Born some
seventy-five years ago. Though, ironically, his
time rang in seven and a half decades of chaos.

But now, I feel the issue of the environment is
ringing in a new time. Oh yes, a funny thing
happened in Berlin. . . Well, no one, not even our
most know-it-all pundits thought this would ever
happen. Certainly not in their life time and,
certainly, not in the way it did. So fast and
without struggle. Well, that's what I mean. . .

And with that, let us take heart, because:

This is a good time,

This is a fine time,

And this is, indeed, our time.

The International Women's Writing Guild, founded by Ms.
Hahn in 1976 and guided by her as its Executive Director, is
a wide network for the personal and professional
empowerment of women through writing. The 5,000 strong
Guild, with members throughout the United States and in 24
countries, attracts and is attuned to an enormously diverse
constituency.

Ms. Hahn, graduate of the University of Southern California
and earlier a student at famed avant-guarde Black Mountain
College, holds an honorary doctorate from Skidmore
College. She is the acclaimed author of On the Way to Feed the
Swans, first volume of an autobiographical trilogy.

Conference: Soviet- American Citizen Summit on the Environment

IN MOSCOW:

WOMEN - PEACE - ECOLOGY

Rosemary Matson

At the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco, the
Head of the Visa Department said, as he handed
me my visa: "You women have a good meeting.
Get this mess in the environment cleaned up." I
said: "You men always make these messes and
expect us women to clean them up." He looked
startled, laughed, a little embarrassed, and an-
swered: "Of course!"

The Soviet Women's Committee in Moscow had
called this meeting "Women - Peace - Ecology"
for early last June. In their invitation to one
hundred international women, they stated they
wanted "to enlarge the role of women in seeking
solutions to the environmental crisis currently
facing our planet."

Women came from 26 countries, representing a
diversity of geographic, cultural and political
backgrounds. Women from Austria, Belgium,
Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia,
Finland, France, both Germanys: FGR and GDR.
Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta,
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Roma-
nia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United
States. One woman came from Nairobi, Kenya.
More than fifty Soviet women participated.
It was a fascinating time to be in Moscow. The
newly elected Congress was in session every day.
Many things in the City were at virtual standstill
as Soviet workers - sales clerks, waiters, taxi
drivers - were glued to television and radios
listening intently to the speeches, harangues,
criticisms and suggestions that poured forth from
the Peoples Delegates at the Congress.

Zoya Pukhova, President of the Women's Com-
mittee, is a Peoples Deputy. On the first day, she
brought several women deputies to speak to us
and to answer any questions we might have.
They told us they were "working under condi-
tions of total democracy" and would talk about
"whatever we wanted to talk about." We heard
from them the idea of an International Green
Cross which President Gorbachev had first pro-
posed on December 7, 1988 in his address to the
United Nations. Based on the idea of the Interna-
tional Red Cross which responds to disaster and
crisis involving people, the International Green
Cross would respond to disaster and

crisis involving the environment anywhere in the
world.

Our week together included several excursions to
environmental projects as well as theme talks,
plenary sessions and workshops around the three
themes chosen by the participants: International
Security and Ecology, Health and Ecology, and
International Cooperation by Women. I partici-
pated in two of the workshops which spoke to
my interests: one on the Brundtland Report: Our
Common Future, and the second one on Eco-
Feminism.

The Brundtland Report is an important document
but very little known in the United States. Adri-
enne van Melle of the Netherlands presented the
Report saying that "ecology has no borders.
When we dump our garbage or poison on a poor
country across the globe, it's crazy to think it
won't wash up on our own shores."

In 1982, the General Assembly of the United
Nations asked the World Commission on Envi-
ronment and Development to evaluate the causes
of the breakdown of the planetary ecosphere and
to produce a global agenda for change. Gro
Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway,
chaired this Commission. Twenty-one nations
were represented from all regions and experts in
areas of foreign affairs, finance, agriculture,
health and ecology participated. The Report
assesses the many crises we face, i.e., global
warming, depletion of the ozone layer, contami-
nation of the water, destruction of forests and
soil erosion, hazardous waste, loss of wildlife
habitat and species, over-population, and then
points out that the crises come from the military,
the cost of the arms race, from development that

is not sustainable, from poverty and affluence,
from injustice and imbalance between the haves
and the have-nots.

Long-term strategies for achieving a globally
sustainable development to the year 2000 and
beyond are proposed. Environment is defined as
"where we live" and development as "what we
do with our lives." The UN in accepting the
Report last year, acknowledged that it must be
kept at the forefront of the UN agenda, but that
each nation also must be involved in fulfilling its
mandate for bringing about the called-for
changes.

Reaction to the Report has been mixed, with
some countries giving it little publicity and
showing no interest. However, some countries,
like Finland, have appointed a prominent com-
mittee to study the Report and to draw conclu-
sions about it for their country. The Soviet
women reported that their government is solidly
behind the Report and copies have been distrib-
uted to each Republic for action by their local
Councils. There is very little known about the
Brundtland Report in the United States. I had
difficulty obtaining a copy and got mine from
Canada.

The workshop on Eco-Feminism presented by my
friend Hilkka Pietila of Finland was of great
interest to me. Hilkka and I had exchanged
articles and books on the subject and both con-
sider ourselves eco-feminists. The coming to-
gether of ecology and feminism involves new
thinking about the environmental crises we are
facing today. Eco-feminists are interested in
searching for the root cause of our problems.
They ask "Why have we come to this situation in
the world? ...not just how to put out the fires that
are raging around us" Hilkka said, "but who or
what is starting the fires? Only when we know
that, can we stop the fires."

Feminism, with its new way of looking at things,
reveals that it is our attitude toward the Earth, as
something which is separate from us, to be
conquered, used, dominated, that is the basis of
the problem.

The system of patriarchy we live under ranks
everything in order of power and importance.
The hierarchical chain of command that perme-
ates all of our social institutions ranks male over
female, adults over children, owner over worker,
rich over poor, have over have-nots, human over
non-human Nature. It incorporates the right of
the human to treat non-human Nature as private
property and material wealth to be dominated
and exploited. It is only when we can break out

of this pattern of patriarchy and begin to realize
that everything is interdependent on this planet,
that we can begin to save it and ourselves.

We are discovering today that a plant can carry
out photosynthesis without human beings, but
we human beings cannot exist without the photo-
synthesis of the plants. We need the trees we are
destroying, to give us oxygen to breathe. By
cutting down the trees, we are in essence com-
mitting suicide.

These were new ideas to many of the women
present at the meetings, but they understood the
practice of domination because each woman had
experienced being dominated and exploited in
her life.

To have an opportunity to share concerns on an
international basis with our sisters was pro-
foundly exciting. One point became extraordinar-
ily clear to us all: we need much broader partici-
pation by women, both scientists and representa-
tives of environmental movements, in all negotia-
tions and decision- making bodies — in the coun-
cils of government and the United Nations.

When the fate of the planet is decided, women
must have full representation — if we are to save
it.

(For a more complete report of the Moscow
meeting, write to Rosemary Matson, Box 1710,
Carmel Valley, CA 93924.)

Conference: Soviet - American Citizen Summit on the Environment

LISTEN THE FUTURE ANEW!

JoAnn Cannon

A memory often fades over time, yet I can still
hear the sound as clearly as if it were last eve-
ning. I was attending a crowded meeting of
people from the African villages around the
school where I was an early Peace Corps Volun-
teer. Issues were being discussed that would
affect the whole community. Sitting outside in
the cooler night air with a few others, I suddenly
heard a sound I had never heard before in my
life, a trill-like sound that started softly but began
to grow with intensity.

"Listen! What is that sound?" I asked with a
degree of awe. Several people leaned forward,
listening. When they didn't respond, I asked
again, "That one there, can't you hear it?" It was
frustrating trying to describe the sound that was
so very distinct to me, yet seemed inaudible to
them "Oh that's the women's voices!" one finally
acknowledged with a nod.

The realization that women in agreement and
excitement made their own special sound
brought silence to my own voice, in that moment
so many years ago. I remember not knowing then
how to express what was in my own heart.
Although country, language, color, custom and
culture ostensibly divided us, there was a sound
being made that was of my own identity as a
woman and bonded me with them. The tone I
heard rang with unity of purpose and power and
had a dash of celebration and encouragement. I
knew the issues discussed in the village that
night would affect everyone, even as yet unborn
generations, and I wanted to say out loud. . .
"YES, IT IS THOSE VOICES OF WOMEN TO-
GETHER THAT CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE
HERE!"

As a participant in the "Women for Change"
Task Force of the 1990 Soviet- American Summit
in Moscow, I am clear how "OUT-LOUD" that
message still needs to be said, believed, and
acted upon. Across the planet, no matter where
you look, you can find a woman setting a new
pace, pointing to different priorities, reasserting
lost values, asking additional questions, grap-
pling with the "whys" and asserting Mother
Earth's interests. Yet to some governments, some
businesses, some organizations, among some
men, and yes, even among some women, such a

woman may still be inaudible or invisible. But
look and see, her presence will be making a
difference!

I am clear that the women around the world
seeking to take greater responsibility for their
own and the earth's affairs, with all the risks
involved, have not done so for economic reasons
alone. There is a felt need in every society to DO
THINGS DIFFERENTLY! Bringing resources and
leadership to the things that will make for a
peaceful and sustainable global environment is
essential to explore.

This last year we have seen some impressive
examples of what women contribute when
narrow perspectives are shed and faces turn
together toward values that will be needed in the
21st century. Japanese women became a force to
show their own Prime Minister the exit off-ramp.
Young women were leaders in the Democracy
Movement in China. Women in Kenya are re-
thinking economics, if the bottom line for profits
results in the decimation of a species as elegant
as the elephant. European women have taken
committed leadership roles toward total nuclear
disarmament on behalf of our entire planet.

Men and women working co-creatively, who
bring a transitional and transgenerational per-
spective, become beacons and examples. What
will we be showing each other and ourselves in
this coming decade? What we do, and value and
support has long-term effect. Our planet is
shrinking and the skeleton of our interconnec-
tions is now apparent.

It has been the deep sharing of women's voices
in heart to heart dialogues, plus telling the truth
about our lives and concerns, that paved the way
for many of the strides experienced to date. We
are entering a decade during which it will be
critical to start anew, listening and talking hon-
estly with one another and the men in our lives.
Some of the gains we have so painstakingly
made this century on behalf of all women and
children and the planet earth could slip into
oblivion like quicksand. Our dialogues must
reflect varying views and a diversity of concerns
and life experiences. Can we listen anew? I am
reminded of the seriousness that we must have
as we face the future, and also the necessity of a
sense of humor about ourselves, our little egos
and our chronic world condition. Women are
bringing to this new decade, not only their voice,
but their capacity for leadership. Not only level-
headedness, but a sense of our spiritual connec-

tion and the gentleness and laughter that can
release good will and healing.

What would my heart say "out loud" today if
once again I heard the sound of women's voices,
as once so long ago? I would stand proudly
beside each one of you who is doing your own
AND the planet's business, and — along with a
woman associate who wrote the following poem
with me, would ask all to listen... as we say to
you:

JoAnn Cannon is President of Inward Bound Adventures,
based in Chicago. She was a co-guest editor of our special
issue on Women in the Wilderness, Spring 1981.

Rise and hear the women take their part

To lead the path that moves along uniting human hearts.

We stand and cast our voice and mind anew,

To bring balance to a world that longs to hear the Future's view.

Fear enters when we leave behind the known,

And tempts us to seek shelter in the past - although it's gone.

But there are always a courageous few

Who will risk their very beings

as the old transforms to new.

It's not so much a case of forging through,

As following the stepping stones as they come into view,

Trusting each new step will be revealed -

And this might be the way in which this broken world is healed.

Videoconference: Corporate America and the Environment

LIVE FROM GOVERNORS STATE UNIVERSITY -
CORPORATE AMERICA AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Sally Petrilli

Panelists from left, Jerry B. Martin, Dow Chemical U.S.A., host Bill Curtis, WBBM-TV/CBS in Chicago,
William J. Schwalm, Polaroid Corporation, and Shelley Yastrow, MacDonald's Corporation.

You take some chances when you produce a live
television event with panelists across the country.
You take the chance that a panelist won't show
up, that the discussion will occasionally wander
off the point or a caller will ask a different ques-
tion than the one you're expecting, that some-
thing will go wrong with a satellite feed. You
also hope that the technology will be mostly
invisible, allowing the focus to be where it be-
longs - on the content of the program. All these
things happened during Corporate America and the
Environment - a national videoconference that
originated from Governors State University in
April. Moderated by Bill Kurtis of WBBM-TV/
CBS in Chicago, the talk centered around the
effects on the business world of what Lester
Brown of Worldwatch Institute calls, "the forces
of ecological decline." Fifty-eight corporate and
university sites joined the national panel, many
contributing to the discussion via open phone
lines.

Planning for the videoconference began with
identifying experts on the environment, spokes-
persons for business and industry, government
representatives and members of the social invest-
ment community as well as case studies to
illustrate successes and positive directions. We
were assisted in all this by a national advisory
panel that met for a day of intensive work in
Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian Institution.
Interest and cooperation were high. Our camera
crew went to the East and West coasts to do
interviews and acquire footage to be incorporated
into the videoconference. Fifteen people agreed
to participate from studios in Washington, D.C,
San Francisco and here in University Park.
The issues covered a wide range of environ-
mental concerns. Jay Hair, CEO of the National
Wildlife Federation, talked about the need for
leadership - from the business community, from
the public and from government. He called for
EPA cabinet status so that "the environment can

be represented at the highest level of govern-
ment."

Recycling and source reduction of wastes, by
individuals and by corporations, was a major
topic. Harold Greshowitz, Senior Vice President
of Waste Management, Inc., said that "recycling
is the strongest grass roots movement in the
country." Jerry Martin, Director of Environ-
mental Affairs for Dow Chemical and William
Schwalm, Senior Manager for Environmental
Programs in Polaroid's manufacturing opera-
tions, talked about the cost-effectiveness of their
companies' waste reduction and recycling pro-
grams. Shelby Yastrow, Senior Vice President
and head of the Environmental Task Force at
McDonalds, described his company's efforts to
meet the growing environmental awareness of
consumers and to deal responsibly with environ-
mental issues in the face of consumer boycotts.
He said, "We have to make good decisions fast."
Joel Makower, co-author of The Green Consumer,
said, "Consumers are sending a message to
corporate America. The market place is not a
democracy. You don't need 50% to effect change

- more like 15%. People are looking for ways they
can vote for the environment when they open
their wallets."

A recurring theme was the feeling that it is in the
economic self- interest of business to develop an
environmental ethic. Though much of the action
by corporations has been a result of "the bottom
line," William Scranton, CEO of Smith and
Hawken, a mail order garden supply company,
agreed with the necessity for environmental
leadership, adding, "We have an obligation to
take a role that satisfies our own conscience and
that of people we work with and this cannot
always be market driven." And although in-
volvement must begin at the boardroom level,
total company participation is important. Jerry
Martin commented, "Our CEO says, Tm not the
chief environmentalist at Dow. I'm one of 58
thousand environmentalists.'"

Senator Timothy Wirth (D-Colo) and Representa-
tive John Porter (R-Ill) joined the panel from the
Senate recording studio to discuss the Clean Air
Bill Amendments, fortuitously up for vote that
evening, and other environmental legislation.
Senator Wirth faulted the automobile industry
for "reflecting politics of the past" and failing to
redesign the automobile to use clean fuels - "the
most cost-effective way to clean our air." The
Associate Administrator of the EPA, Lewis
Crampton, talked about "corporate stewardship"

- the need to be forthcoming with the public, to
take voluntary actions beyond the law.

Environmental problems are real and immediate,
the answers complex. Everyone agreed that there
have been successes but there is much left to be
done and we will be engaging in this dialog for
many decades to come. Big changes are ahead for
businesses as they strive to comply with the
increasing maze of environmental regulations
and social pressures. The panel participants
suggested that stronger regulations are needed
and consumers must be willing to give up the big
waste and pollution creators such as disposable
diapers and inefficient automobiles. Yet a pro-
active tone was set. They noted that cooperation
is possible, that there can be a common meeting
ground among business, consumers, environmen-
talists and government. As Jay Hair put it, "It's
no longer them and us. It's us."

About those chances you take when you produce
a videoconference; one of the panelists from the
Eastern part of the country who was scheduled
to join the conference from the West Coast in
combination with a business trip, arrived in the
San Francisco studio on Eastern time, four hours
late - apologies were accepted; a lengthy question
to Senator Wirth concerning the housing market,
not relevant to our discussion, was quickly
steered back on track; a caller, telling our phone
bank that he wanted to talk about the lack of
discussion on environmental ethics in his busi-
ness school classes, took his on-air opportunity to
talk about local water rights problems - could
have been worse; and while the sound from the
studio in San Francisco was lost for a while, Bill
Kurtis skillfully moved the discussion elsewhere.
And the final result was what we hoped it would
be - three hours of lively talk and up-to-date
information about the pressing environmental
issues that face corporations and small businesses
today. Will Governors State University do an-
other live event of this stature? You bet - and the
sooner the better!

Sally Petrilli is an Instructional Developer in the Instructional
Communications Center at Governors State University. She
was involved with research and content development for the
videoconference. She notes that though the planning team
was alert to locating women working for environmental
concerns from top management position, few were found.
However, many women are working in the "grass roots"
movements, the social investment community, and in
research and consulting positions.

Information on the purchase of copies of the videoconference
is available from the Executive Producer, Mel Muchnik - In-
structional Communications Center, Governors State
University, University Park, IL (708) 534-5000, ext. 2313.

Conference: Womanquest, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, April, 1990

Suzanne Dechnik

LADY OF TURNING

Kendyl Gibbons

Lady of the season's laughter,
In the summer's warmth be near;
When the winter follows after
Teach our spirits not to fear.
Hold us in your steady mercy
Lady of the turning year.

Sister of the evening star light,
In the falling shadows stay
Here among us till the far light
Of tomorrow's dawning ray.
Hold us in your steady mercy
Lady of the turning day.

Mother of the generations,
In whose love all life is worth
Everlasting celebrations,
Bring our labors safe to birth.
Hold us in your steady mercy
Lady of the turning earth.

Goddess of all times' progression,
Stand with us when we engage
Hands and heart to end oppression,
Writing history's fairer page.
Hold us in your steady mercy
Lady of the turning age.

These new words, sung to an old tune ("Come and
Worship") made Rev. Gibbons the Winner of the UUA
Hymnbook Competition.

DECLARATION OF THE FOUR
SACRED THINGS

A WORK IN PROGRESS

Starhawk

The earth is a living, conscious being. In com-
pany with cultures of many different times and
places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire,
water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy,
blood and body of the planet, or as the blessed
gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the intercon-
nected systems that sustain life, we know that
nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they
have a value beyond their usefulness for human
ends, that they themselves become the standards
by which our acts, our economics, our laws and
our purposes must be judged. No-one has the
right to appropriate them or profit from them at
the expense of others. Any government which
fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy. For it
is everyone's responsibility to sustain, heal and
preserve the soil, the air, the fresh and salt wa-
ters, and the energy resources that can support
diverse and flourishing life.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth-
life, and so sacred. No one of us stands higher or
lower than any other. Only justice can assure
balance: only ecological balance can sustain
freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred
thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.
To honor the sacred is to create conditions in
which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowl-
edge, freedom and beauty can thrive. To honor
the sacred is to make love possible.

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our
courage, our silences and our voices. To this we

Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations: The Art of Betye and Alison Saar

July 14 - September 16, 1990

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

A highly unusual exhibition opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art on July 14, composed of 75
individual works and one collaborative site-specific installation by a mother and daughter pair — Betye
and Alison Saar. Working on both coasts — Betye in California, Alison in New York City — they also
call themselves "colleagues, sisters and friends." Explaining this complex relationship, Betye says,
"When we are separated, we're mother and daughter, but when we come together, we're sisters."

Art critics who have reviewed this show at UCLA have liked to focus on their similarities and
differences. They cite Betye's refined and mystical evocations of Pacific Rim cultures, the lyrical, organic
quality of her California setting and place in contrast Alison's "gritty urban edge," often shocking and
demanding, influenced by her rough and tough NYC environment.

The artists themselves cite their connections, their habits of sharing materials, the found objects they
each prefer, and their mutual influences and interactions. In their collaborative work, "The House of
Gris Gris," the theme of home as a nurturing nest and a place of spiritual renewal brings their visions
into a coherent whole.

In the film "Spirit Catcher", one of a series on "The Originals: Women in Art," Betye is asked by the
interviewer, "How do you reconcile the two roles of mother and artist?" and Betye replies, laughing,
"What's the difference?"

Readers are urged to go and see this wonderful show, coming to us from the Wight Gallery, UCLA, and
continuing on to Smith College in Northampton, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and the
Oakland Museum in Oakland, California. Be sure to look for the extremely innovative and original
catalog designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.

Prepare yourself to be moved by these secrets and shaken by these revelations, prepare to cross a
boundary line between the worlds; plan to be quiet in these halls and spaces, to take a risk, to be open to
the unexpected and the mystery of the unknown. To find something of beauty and value in what has
been discarded, to discern traces of life and eerie power in much-used objects, to hear those echoes of
love and loss , such is the gift that awaits you in the art of Betye and Alison Saar.

Alison Saar and Betye Saar with the figure LAZARUS, 1988, wood, paint and
rhinestoncs by Alison Saar. Photograph by Anthony Barbosa.

Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations: The Art of Betye and Alison Saar

July 14 - September 16, 1990

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Dr. Damballa's ]u-Ju,

1989, free-standing assemblage,

Betye Saar

SECTION II

THE HUMAN-ANIMAL BOND AND THE
QUESTION OF ANIMAL RIGHTS

THE WONDER OF WHALES

Marilyn Fischbach

She lies perfectly still, twenty feet below the
surface. The water is crystal clear, blue. The
ocean is calm, the wind barely rippling the water.
She is perfectly still.

I float on the surface. She is directly below me,
bigger and grayer than I ever imagined. Resting,
motionless, the whiteness of her fins glows a
metallic azure color. To see her is a feast for my
eyes.

I am still, except for my breathing. My breathing
is involuntary, even with an unfamiliar snorkel,
my breath just comes. I try to breathe quietly, I
don't want to make any noise to break the spell
of the moment. She lies perfectly still — not
breathing at all.

She lies perfectly still, twenty feet below me, a
humpback whale, 40 tons, thirty or more feet
long. She allows me to observe her universe.
Silently her calf glides out from under her fin
and moves toward me. I am in such awe that I
did not even notice the calf.

The calf comes toward me. Closer she comes,
looking at me (or so I assume). For an instant I
wonder if I should move. What if the calf doesn't
know how fragile I am in the water? The instant
passes, I look at the calf, the calf looks at me.
Then she turns and swims down to her mother.
She touches her mother with her fin. They both
turn toward me and then down away from me,
away to eventually surface to breathe.

I stay still for a few more moments. I can hardly
believe what just happened. My immediate re-
sponse is to laugh. My laughter brings coughs
and sputters — I'm still in the water with my
snorkel. As I haul myself into the boat I say to
myself, "I have seen whales in their environment.
I was with them in the water." With a sense of
sheer delight I add, "And, I was seen by two
whales!"

Considering that we live in a world so entirely
different from the world in which whales
dwell, and that most of us never see them at
all, and considering that everything surround-
ing their lives is shrouded in almost complete
ignorance, it is a little hard to understand just
where an interest in whales arises.. .all we need
to know is that it does arise. Whales tend to
26

lodge in the hearts of people — sometimes they
lodge crosswise where they stick for life.

Roger Payne

For reasons I don't understand, whales are
caught in my heart, so much so that I journeyed
4,250 miles to volunteer my time for 14 days to
work with the Pacific Whale Foundation in Maui,
Hawaii. The PWF has an internship program for
ordinary citizens who want to learn more about
whales, assist in on-going research, and support
efforts to learn more about whales and their
ocean environment.

The internship was a com-
bination of work and fun.
Everyone understood
that our time in

~>~\

Hawaii

was more
than just a
holiday. Our
work, for
even a short
time, would be
added to the work of
other seasons. Part of our work was to go out
early every morning in small boats to survey
sections inside Maalea Bay and survey sections
just outside the Bay. We were trying to determine
the actual location of whale pods. When a pod
was spotted, we attempted to get ID photos of in-
dividual whales by getting photographs of the
underside of the tail. The photos become part of
an ever increasing catalogue of identified whales.
These catalogues are used when whales are re-
spotted in their summer feeding grounds or in
other winter migration areas. In this way, whales
can be followed and observed and studied with-
out harm.

Humpbacks are an endangered species. At one
time there were thousands of humpback whales.
The northern Pacific population now contains
between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals. They were
hunted to the point of near extinction. And, the
jury is still out as to whether or not they will be
able to re-establish themselves.

There used to be millions of whales in all the
world's oceans. From 1949 to 1962 more than a

million and a half whales were killed. Killed and
used to make soap and cosmetics and buttons
and ribs for umbrellas and golf bags and nitro-
glycerine for bombs. We did not need to kill
whales to make these products, but we did. The
factory ships went out year after year. If they
could wound a calf, they would be sure to get
the mother. Factory ships used sonar and air sur-
veillance and exploding harpoon guns. In 30
minutes an entire whale could be reduced to
nothing but its pieces. Nothing was wasted,
except for the whale. In today's market a whale,
a dead one, is worth from between $1 5,000 to
$25,000. There are so few whales left that it is
finally too expensive to hunt them.

Whaling originated with coastal people who
discovered that a whale could provide meat and
materials for a whole village. The death of a
whale was a gift to people. It took great skill and
courage to go out onto the ocean and kill a whale
and bring it back. It was hard to imagine killing
more whales than could be used.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries whal-
ing became a business. Whale oil provided the
fuel for lights, lights in homes, on street corners,
in factories. Whale oil was used because petro-
leum had not yet been discovered. In the middle
1800s, some 70,000 men, in the United States
alone, were employed in the whaling industry.
The demand for oil was great and profits were
high. Men had ships that could master the sea.
They could hunt whales mid ocean and not just
along the coast. It became possible to kill more
and more whales. As we became more and more
efficient killers, the whales did not become more
efficient breeders.

We killed without thought. Whales must be like
fish, so plentiful that we could never kill them
all. But we did. We killed them even when there
was no longer a demand for their oil. We kill
them now in the name of research with factory
ships right behind to turn the research into pet
food and fertilizer and cosmetics.

Whales have lived in the oceans for 50 million
years. We have actively hunted them for 400
years and have totally decimated their popula-
tions in the last 70 years.

We know lots of information about dead whales.
We learned to estimate their age by examining
the accumulated layers of wax in their ear canals.
In female whales, every time they ovulate a scar
is left on the ovary, so by counting the scars we
estimated their age at death. We examined the
rows of baleen, new rows are added up to the
sixth year. By counting the rows we knew if they

were six years or younger when they were killed.
We know how big their hearts were. In a blue
whale, the heart is four feet across and pumps
2,500 gallons of blood. The aorta is 18 inches in
diameter. We have weighed and measured
hundreds and thousands of dead whales. And
while we did this, we barely took time to notice
that whales rarely have any type of cancer in
their bodies. Most other animals have evidence of
pathological disease, but whales do not.

It is only recently that we've begun to study live
whales. Most of the killing has stopped. The
great whales — the Blues, the Humpbacks, the
Right, the Fin, the Sperm are so depleted that
they may not be able to survive. With the great
whales gone, nations like Japan, Iceland, Nor-
way, Argentina are hunting the smaller whales,
the Sei, Minke, and Beluga. And soon these too
will be hunted to extinction.

Now, when it may be too late, we come, people
like me and hundreds more, come to the whales
to try to learn about them. In our small boats we
approach them carefully to take pictures to see if
we will recognize them again — hopefully, years
from now.

Here's some of what we have learned about
humpbacks:

* The northern Pacific population spends the
summer eating in arctic waters off Alaska. At the
end of summer they migrate to islands south of
Japan, Hawaii, the Farallon Islands and Baja to
mate and calf. During these months they don't
eat.

* We don't know how they know how to get
from the Arctic to Hawaii.

* We do not have actual pictures of humpbacks
giving birth or mating or nursing.

* The humpbacks are the most surface-active of
all whales, we can only guess why. It may be a
form of communication. It may be part of the
mating ritual. It may be for play. We have seen
situations where it looks like a calf is being
taught by the mother or a male escort to leap out
of the water. Whales also slap their fins and their
tails on the water. They bring their heads straight
out of the water and spy-hop or lunge.

* Their sense of hearing is their most acute
sense. Their eyes can focus out of the water and
in the water, but it seems that hearing is their
most important sense.

* Humpbacks sing. In the summer time, single
males can be found suspended in the water
singing a song that is repeated by other animals
and is added to and changed each year. There are

massive low tones and high tone whistles. Off
Maui, if you dive into the water and go down
about three feet, you can hear the singing. If the
whale happens to be close by, you can feel the
song vibrate through your body.

* As far as we can tell, there are no extended
family groupings. A mother will stay with a calf
for about a year. A calf will nurse for its first
year, in the early months, gaining a hundred
pounds a day.

* We know that some calves and mothers do not
like to be near boats and there are other calves
and mothers and escorts that seem to be quite
curious about people and boats.

* There have never been any reports of hump-
backs ramming boats or injuring people. On the
contrary, there have been reports of whales
assisting people who have fallen out of boats.

* Proportionally, the whale brain is larger than
the human brain. And it is thought that whales
have the intelligence to communicate and learn
beyond instinct.

So, we come to learn about whales. We try to
count them and observe them and even name
them. We do this because we don't know how
else to learn. Whales live under the water in a
world we cannot see. The whales inhabit an
environment that has no boundaries. They have
no property. They do not build or save.

American Indians believe that whales are the
keepers and guardians of the world's wisdom. If
this is so, then we have more to learn from the
whales than we can learn about them. And
perhaps in studying the whale, what we really
learn about is ourselves.

For me, a land/city person, just to be out on the
ocean was an adventure. Knowing that whales
were near brought a sense of wonder to the
experience. We think that whales play a lot —
maybe our research with them will help us learn
to play — to bring a lightness, a sense of wonder
to what we do.

We have killed almost all the whales and are
slowly killing the oceans with our pollution. And
yet what I learned from the whales was a sense
of joy, a celebration of the sheer exuberance of
life. And a hope that there will be whales for
future generations to learn from.

NOTE: My experience with the whales was
strictly supervised. In the water we were ac-
companied by a marine biologist who was
taking underwater photographs. In Maalea Bay,
people and boats are not allowed within 300
yards of a whale. Elsewhere people and boats
cannot approach closer than 100 yards. Only
individuals or organizations with Federal Re-
search permits are allowed closer approaches.
The Federal and State laws apply to all people
and water craft and are strictly enforced.
Whales can, of course, approach boats or
people whenever they choose! If you would
like more information about humpback whales,
contact the Pacific Whale Foundation:

Pacific Whale Foundation Suite 25, Kealia
Beach Plaza 101 N. Kihei Road

Kihei, Maui, Hawaii 96753

Marilyn Fischbach is Manager of Training and Development,
John Crane Inc. She was Guest Editor of our issue on
Women in Management, Winter, 1989.

/ /

r; v

FACTORY FARMING:

NOT MR. MACDONALD'S FARM!

Marcy Gross

dose
your
eyes
and
imag-
ine life on the
farm

grazing in
a field

of /*$ ■■

green
grass,
nuz-
zling

their calves. Chickens roaming about the barn-
yard, squawking and scratching to their hearts'
content. Nearby, some pigs yawn contentedly
while others play in their pens, waiting for
Farmer Joe to come and feed them. Sounds like a
good, old-fashioned, MacDonald's farm.

It's a good thing we can still picture it in our
minds because the idyllic family farm is almost a
thing of the past. It's rapidly being replaced by
what's become known as an animal "factory,"
where animals are crammed together in small
cages and never see the sun, taste the rain or feel
the grass beneath their feet. The farm "family"
now consists of automated feeding, water and
ventilation systems, computerized closed-circuit
TVs and vacuum pumps. Health comes not from
exercise and fresh air but from antibiotics and
hormones.

"Factory farming" caught on shortly before
World War II, when farmers began to specialize
in the year-round production of chickens to meet
increased demand. Newly-discovered Vitamins A
and D replaced sunlight and exercise for bone
development and proper growth. There were
bigger buildings, bigger flocks and bigger profits.
Large feed companies put researchers to work
creating new strains of broader-breasted chicken
and hybrid corn feed which would result in
quicker weight gain. Many small farmers didn't
have enough money for the new factory-type
production. They went broke or were taken over
by big-money food producers — "agribusiness."

Today, 95 percent of chicken farming is in the
hands of fewer than five companies. Pork and
beef production has also become large-scaled and

labor-intensive though not as much as chicken.
The goal of modern farming is to maximize profit
by increasing output at the lowest cost.

Intense controversy has erupted over factory
farming and the ethical concerns that go with it:
close confinement, overcrowding or isolation of
pigs, chicken and calves and the branding, de-
horning and castration of cattle without anesthe-
sia.

At one end of the spectrum are animal welfarists
who find the animals' conditions deplorable —
especially the plight of the veal calf. Dr. Alex
Hershaft of the Washington, D.C.-based Farm
Animal Reform Movement paints this picture:
Taken from his mother the day of birth, the calf
is chained from the neck in a narrow, unbedded
crate too small to turn around in. Kept in dark-
ness to hold down excitement, he's fed a liquid
diet of skim milk, growth stimulators and antibi-
otics. This anemic diet results in the kind of pale-
colored flesh gourmets find desirable. Those that
survive the chronic diarrhea and respiratory
disorders are slaughtered at 16 weeks of age.

"If you keep a calf in a box, deny him solid food,
fresh air and exercise, you're gonna have a very
sick animal," says Brad Miller of the San Fran-
cisco-based Humane Farming Association. He
points to a recent study at Texas A & M which
showed conclusively that stress levels increased
when calves were confined. Virginia veterinarian
Dr. Matt Graves, who's seen both the confine-
ment and outdoor "free-range" systems, confirms
the charges of animal welfare groups. 'Those
cows can barely get up and are extremely suscep-
tible to disease. Imagine being in a coffin and
sucking liquid through a straw, that's what it's
like."

Chickens are probably the most intensively
confined animals and their lives are nothing to
crow about. Hens live in cages layered one on
top of the other in long, barracks-type buildings
which hold up to 250,000 hens. Five birds fit in a
cage the size of a newspaper until they're slaugh-
tered at about 18 months of age. The wire mesh
floor cuts into their feet, causing inflamed joints
and twisted legs. To prevent stress-induced
fighting from overcrowding, their beaks are
seared with a hot blade so they won't peck each
other to death. Male chicks are suffocated or
gassed at birth and artificial lights are kept on 14-
16 hours a day to stimulate egg production.
When hens are no longer productive egg-layers,
they're killed and made into soup and other
processed foods.

Broilers are kept in similar barracks but here
about 90,000 birds take over the entire floor;

2 q

they're killed for their meat at seven weeks old.
In the time it takes to read this page, over 5,000
birds, mostly chickens, will be killed. Paul Mel-
amo left a job in the confinement system to work
on a free-range chicken farm, Nest Egg Farms of
Taos, New Mexico. "Chickens don't usually
engender compassion but after awhile it gets to
you," he recalls. "The confinement was really
terrible. They'd be in small, dark areas. Lots of
cannibalism with caged birds. Here we have very
little of that!"

Pig production has also moved into the arena of
factory farms. According to the People for Ethical
Treatment of Animals, 90 percent of all pigs are
closely confined at some point in their lives and
70 percent are constantly confined. Sows are kept
pregnant or nursing constantly and are kept in
metal stalls, unable to turn around. She's only
allowed to eat, drink and keep teats exposed to
piglets; hard pen floors result in painful foot
lesions. Although pigs are naturally peaceful,
social animals, they resort to cannibalism and
tailbiting when packed into crowded pens and
develop neurotic behaviors such as bar-biting
and head-rocking when isolated and confined. To
prevent cannibalism, piglets have their tails
docked — without anesthesia.

At the other end of the spectrum from the animal
rights groups are farming industry representa-
tives. They claim that animal activists wrongly
attribute human emotions to animals. "Bar-biting
and pacing may or may not be abnormal — it's a
subjective interpretation," says Dr. David Meeker
of the National Pork Producer's Council. "Ani-
mal rights groups try to put themselves in an
animals' position. We think that's inappropriate.
Animals are well-fed, comfortable, warm and
clean. . . that's basically all an animal wants. "A
cow doesn't need to exercise," William Boardman
of Dairy Farmers, Inc. claims. "She uses up a
tremendous amount of energy just to make
milk."

Researcher Dr. Joy Mench, Department of Poultry
Science, University of Maryland, says, "We need
more scientific research to determine whether
animals feel boredom, frustration, pleasure or
apprehension of future suffering. I don't feel it's
been proven one way or the other."

Somewhere in the middle of the activists and
industry representatives is Howard Lyman,
legislative analyst for the National Farmer's
Union, which represents the 540,000 family farms
still left. "I wouldn't attach all human feelings to
animals but I know they respond to a negative or
positive environment — I've been kicked by more
than a few cattle who were afraid."

"Animal activists have to understand why ani-
mals are treated the way they are," Lyman states.
"A sow's farrowing crate, for example, prevents
her from instinctually eating her piglets at birth
or accidentally crushing them. Piglet mortality
has decreased greatly since the farrowing crate."

Referring to the veal crate Lyman states, "The
veal calf never gets his mother's milk so he's
extremely susceptible to disease. A veal operator
has to crate his animals to cut down on disease;
that way the calf can't turn around and get at the
bacteria in his stool. After three weeks the calf s
built up some resistance; then you should get
them out and exercise them."

"A successful food producer must take good care
of his animals — a veal operator should keep the
mortality rate below 10 percent," Lyman contin-
ues. "Violate the rules of good management and
you'll go broke."

At the root of factory farming is simple econom-
ics. Free-range farming requires more labor to
watch over and care for animals; keeping them
confined results in simpler management with
fewer staff needed. They have to squeeze maxi-
mum productivity out of minimum space. "If we
had to allow a calf more space," Barb Huffman,
President of the Wisconsin Veal Association
notes, "it measures into our profitability and
we'd be out of business. If we changed our
methods we wouldn't exist."

Some of the family farmers are locked into
contractual arrangements with the huge agribusi-
ness corporations. Free-range veal farmer Rachel
Nicholl puts it this way: "A confinement farmer
buys the milk-replacement formula from the

same company
that ends up
buying the
animals from
the farmer. The
formula pro-
duces the pale,
anemic color. If
the meat
doesn't satisfy
their demand
for pale color,
they'll post-
pone the sale
which is a
tremendous
burden, eco-
nomically."

Same with the
average
chicken farmer.

"He's a slave to the packing industry," says
Lyman. "Agribusiness has the small farmer in
economic bondage; he's forced to buy their feed
and sell to their plant."

What does the future hold for farm animal
production? It isn't clear, but reforms seem
inevitable. A recent Massachusetts bill to improve
the health of farm animals and promote the use
of humane practices in animal husbandry was
voted down. Lyman isn't surprised: "A farmer in
one state competes with farmers in other states. If
they're legislated to do certain things out-of-state
farmers don't have to do, they'll be eliminated
competitively. You'd have to make legislation
international to be effective."

And slowly, advancements are being made on
the international scene. Last July, Sweden en-
acted a Farm Animal Bill of Rights, freeing cattle,
pigs and chickens from the restrictions of inten-
sive, factory-farming methods. Most of the re-
quirements will be phased in over the next few
years, to lift some of the economic burden from
farmers and give them time to build more spa-
cious accommodations.

Veal producers such as Quantock in Great Britain
have done away with the veal crate in favor of
the straw-yard system, where there's natural
lighting and straw bedding. There's better health,
and therefore fewer drugs are added to the feed.
The meat is less tender says the Food Animals
Concerns Trust, a Chicago-based animal welfare
group. But it's richer in taste and texture, lower
in fat and contains no potentially harmful drug
residues. The Netherlands and Switzerland are
phasing out the cage system and Great Britain
has banned it. Sweden and Switzerland have
outlawed the use of tethers for the restraint of
breeding sows.

One thing is certain. Improvements and research
are needed. But before that can happen, both
sides need to talk. As Dr. Stan Curtis, Professor
of Animal Science at the University of Illinois
maintains, 'There is no other nation in the west-
ern world where there is less fruitful exchange of
ideas and information between the humane
movement and production agriculture than right
here in the U.S."

ARE FACTORY FARM ANIMALS
GOOD TO EAT?

Aside from the inhumanity of the conditions
under which factory farm animals are raised, the
hottest controversy is over the quality of food
they produce. Half of all antibiotics manufac-
tured in the U.S. are given to farm animals on a
daily basis to combat stress- induced disease.

Howard Lyman, life-long cattle farmer and
legislative analyst for the National Farmer's
Union feels: "If you crowd animals together
without antibiotics there's gonna be lots of
disease — there's absolutely no doubt in my
mind about that."

In addition to antibiotics the vast majority of
animals are routinely fed hormones to stimulate
growth and production. In fact, up until 1979,
DES — known to cause birth defects in hu-
mans — was used in cattle feed! Although the
official position of the National Cattlemen's
Association is that DES is no longer used, Dr.
Stan Curtis of the University of Illinois adds:
"There are probably still ways of getting DES. It
wouldn't surprise me if some people are using
it."

The U.S.'s use of antibiotics and hormones hasn't
endeared us to our European neighbors. Effective
January 1, 1989, the European Community
banned U.S. imports of meat from animals that
were fed artificial growth-inducing hormones,
even if the meat itself is free of any traces of
hormones.

But not everyone finds the use of antibiotics
objectionable. Dr. Edwin Foster, former Director
of the Food Research Institute at the University
of Wisconsin says, "There's no known effect on
human health from antibiotics used as feed
ingredients. It might be harmful for antibiotics to
be used to treat disease, such as mastitis in
milking cows, if that milk is later consumed by
one who is allergic to the drug. But I presume
antibiotics would be metabolized through the
intestinal tract and not get into human food.
There is no evidence it stays in the muscle. The
biggest problem with antibiotics is the issue of
bacteria resistance — antibiotics used in animal
feed may result in a meateater becoming immune
to them which would jeopardize his ability to be
treated for disease."

To be safe, more and more people are purchasing
only free-range animal products: veal, chicken,
beef and "nest" eggs that have "no antibiotics or
hormones" written on the package/carton. If
your supermarket doesn't carry them, ask them
to; in rural areas, contact your county extension
agent.

Marcy Gross is an editor at Woman's World Magazine. She
lives in New Jersey. Her main interest is the issue of
animal rights.

SECTION III THE MOVEABLE FEAST

GAIASPEAK

Bethe Hagens

I was extremely impressed by a recent article in
Time magazine that stated researchers were about
to prove that no one reads books... apart from
"compelling" books (e.g. Stephen King and the
Harlequins), that is. People seem to be buying
books and hoping that their contents will some-
how come through by osmosis.

I have always believed that there was a level of
truth in this idea. I look long and lovingly at
book covers, but the sheer number of words in
most books overwhelms me. I don't read quickly
and have the habit of memorizing what I do get
through.

The past year has brought an enormous change,
however. It began with a domestic decision to
give up control of our house (rooms set aside for
specific purposes such as eating, bathing, sleep-
ing; dining room table cleared off; books shelved,
at right angles to those shelves...) and let it turn
into a library. There are books everywhere.
EVERYWHERE. And now that the "library
feeling" is starting to be an integral and even
jealously guarded part of our daily life, I have
become obsessed with dictionaries. All kinds.
French, German, Hopi, Sanskrit, Greek, Japanese,
Proto-Indo-European, Gaelic... English!

My husband Bill Becker and I began to acquire
books (and dictionaries) in earnest in 1983 as we
prepared for a presentation of our research at one
of the first conferences on the Gaia hypothesis.
(Bill is a design mathematician who worked with
Buckminster Fuller and has taught at Chicago's
Adler Planetarium.) We have been working with
a variety of geometric models of the earth — and
have come to believe that the mathematics and
geometry of ancient cultures is directly applicable
to contemporary modeling in cellular biology
and astrophysics. (I have written about this for
Creative Woman and won't repeat myself here.)
We have been greatly inspired by the linguistic
connection that binds the "ge" in geometry,
geology, generate, gene, Genesis... to Ge (Gaia) —
the Greek word for earth and the goddess of the
earth.

In our research with primal geometric forms
known as the Platonic solids (Fig. 1), we found
that one of them — the icosahedron — perfectly
described the common virus (Fig. 2, #1). This
32

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

The Egyptian MR
Triangle

Figure 4

/ _jH 1440

^V2592 MUes

The Egyptian "MR" Tr
of the Planetary Grid

iangle in the Geon

2160

Miles

ietry

seemed absolutely unbelievable, especially since
the icosahedron was exactly the model that we
were using to talk about a kind of skeletal struc-
ture for the "living energy" of Gaia (Fig. 2, #2).

I went immediately to the encyclopedia (another
treasure I have discovered in recent years),
curious to learn what I could about viruses.
Ultimately, I wondered where the word "virus"
came from and ended up in the Oxford English
Dictionary.

"Virus" is a relatively new word, and its vi
represents a change over time from the original
Latin root ui. The history of ui (as in uiolare, "to
force," "to do violence to") and its derivative vi
(as in vivere, "to be alive," "to live") was so filled
with contradiction that I wondered if I had made
some ghastly etymological mistake.

Apparently ui (and therefore vi) stems from the
Sanskrit vrt. This latter root, vrt, is nothing less
than a danger sign in Sanskrit. It is a powerful
predicative meaning "to be" in the sense of "a
vibrational happening, a shimmering, unevolu-
tive eventfulness." Imagine a language universe
in which nouns and verbs do not exist, in which
living being "is" rather than "does." (I think the
deconstructivist psychologists are trying to do
just this.) The ancient speakers of Sanskrit seem
to have prized such a state of utterances. Their
sages warned of the need to "restrain the "vrtti,"
to curb the use of predicatives that "language" a
reality in which subject and object are separate
things acted with and upon.

Latin and other modern Indo-European lan-
guages more or less locked their speakers into
philosophical dead-ends Eastern cultures may
have traditionally avoided. Vrtti have becme the
touchstones of our speech and our morality. Our
cultures have languaged a non-living verbal/
physical universe in which an object (or being)
and the qualities it manifests are (even must be)
increasingly differentiated. I have come to think
of this as the "Substance Fallacy."

We have come to believe that our life — our "ac-
tion" — is separate from us. In geometer-designer
Buckminster Fuller's words, we "long ago misas-
sumed that the organism employed by life is the
life itself instead of merely the vehicle — as if the
telephone was the communication itself instead
of merely the instrument."

The implications of this cultural linguistic choice
are as overwhelming as the number of words we
have generated to try to rectify what may have
been a grave mistake (or non-adaptive evolution-
ary branch) in our history. One needs only to
survey words derived from vi to get the picture.
They preserve, in agonizing clarity if one chooses

to look, the enigmas and paradoxes embraced in
modern society: vir and virgo ("man" and
"maiden"); viron and virga ("sphere" and "rod");
virent and virus ("to become green and flourish"
and "slime, poison"); and virtue ("a power
distinct from matter" and "efficacy arising from a
quality of physical or moral nature").

This linguistic heritage, with all its contradic-
tions, is epitomized in the contemporary struggle
of scientists and public health officials to describe
and legislate the life that characterizes the
"thing" we call the virus. What medicine has
scientifically described as the "life" of the virus is
almost a linguistic inventory of the vrt deriva-
tives. The virus has the power of self-assembly
and replication, but it does not sexually repro-
duce. Its forms are either spherical/icosahedral
or rod-shaped/heliacal. It either coexists in a
healthy living cell or it attacks and destroys its
host. It exists as both a "hollow shell" of crystal-
lized protein or as an ordered complex of viral
nucleic acid with a structural protein shell. The
detour into defining its life by characteristics of
its "substance" leads only to paradox and mean-
ingless questions such as "Is a virus animal or
mineral?"

Alfred North Whitehead, certainly an under-
recognized Gaia theorist, would have laughed at
the question. "Biology is the study of the larger
organism," he once said, "whereas physics is the
study of the smaller organisms." We can't think
in these terms, however, thanks to our linguistic
heritage. We depend upon black and white, fact
and myth, good and bad, actor and action. Just as
we seek ways to eradicate the virus, we try to
"repair" Gaia/Earth with technical solutions
premised on mechanical "as if it were alive"
models of a living organism This is wholly
predictable, especially since no clear linguistic
distinction can be made between "environment"
and "virus." Their roots are identical. I don't
think we are ready, culturally, to face what this
really means. "Something" initiates action in the
"being" we have languaged into "things" we call
either "virus" or "Earth." This is, for me, a pro-
foundly private matter — and one I prefer to
leave unlanguaged. Much contemporary research
on this matter is heartening, however, and has
begun to invalidate the classical picture of the
virus as an "alien" bent on its own replication
and destruction of its host cell. (Would that the
same could be said for the human species!)

Sir Fred Hoyle has described "virus" as a pri-
mary mechanism in evolution. If the "human"
life process ends, he argues, the viral process
ends also. They are not truly distinguishable.
Therefore, if the viral action "succeeds," it does

so by not killing its host. When genetic modifica-
tion occurs as a result of viral encounter, evolu-
tion has taken place. (I like this theory very
much.)

Nevertheless, a paradox exists. The natural
response of host cells to "foreign particles"
(including the substances we refer to as viruses)
is to ingest and dispose of them. This dual nature
of physiological response is, of course, reflected
in our language. The word "host" is derived
from both "victim" (hostia) and "war-like expedi-
tion" (hostem) — as well as from "guest" and
"host" (both hospes). The fate of "the host cell"
and "the virus" (beware the vrtti!) is interdepen-
dency. Creative opposition. Yin and yang.

What I have discovered is that there are a very,
very few "root" words and meanings. Like vi,
they are almost all dichotomous, and they both
transcend and link the various human tongues. I
have begun to imagine a wonderfully simple,
profoundly expressive ancient language that
might have consisted of less than one hundred
words. I call it GaiaSpeak, It would have avoided
the traps of nouns and verbs, tenses, subject and
objects. It would have epitomized the mystery of
life in overtly recognized paradoxes of speech.
My most recent insight into GaiaSpeak came
from a bumper sticker I found myself staring at
as I waited for a train to pass. It was beautifully
printed in Celtic-type letters that spelled out An
Gaelica. I felt the old pounding heart that gener-
ally accompanies a prolonged spell of dictionary-
mania as it dawned on me that I might be look-
ing at another linguistic manifestation of Gaia,
this time via "my own" people — the Irish. I
wondered if it could possibly be that the Gaelic
an gael had preserved a connection between
geometric angles and angels? Gaia might, then,
be the living being now languaged as these
"things." There is solid evidence that this is at
least part of the picture.

Irish Gaelic, from what little I remember from my
Grandmother, is a fairy language — intimately
poetic, tender, and alive. It seems to have heeded
the warning against overuse of the vrtti in inter-
esting ways. In Early Irish, I've found that an
gael would translate as "the essence of love."
Hence, "angelic" (I believe).

The leap to "angle" is more circuitous. Substan-
tial connections between ancient Gaelic and
Egyptian cultures have now been well-docu-
mented within academia. Even the measuring
systems of the two cultures were virtually identi-
cal. It seems, therefore, impossible to ignore the
fact that the most sacred triangle in ancient
Egyptian mathematics is known as MR or "love"
(Fig. 3). Hence, I believe, "angle." (This same
34

triangle is also the geometric "heart" of the
icosahedron that describes both the earth model
we have developed as well as the protein shell of
the virus.)

I regularly check speculations such as these with
others who love word histories. Most of us have
reached the conclusion that what has happened,
in theory, to language — and what actually
happened — are bound to be very different
stories. For instance, my Proto-Indo-European
dictionary states the "angle" reaches us via the
root ank — which means "to bend" or "to turn."
Following the lead taken by Martin Bernal in his
astonishing text Black Athena, I also invoke the
Egyptian root for "life" (ankh). Life. Bending and
turning. I wonder endlessly if, as the Koran and
other ancient Chinese and Hindu texts seem to
indicate, there was early knowledge of the DNA
spiral in human history.

The same dictionary is adamant that "Gaia" is a
Greek noun of unknown origin. I don't think so.
The Early Irish had a dichotomous language, and
it is more than curious that their word gainntir
has survived. It means "jail." If I trace from the
other direction, i.e. back in time from our word
"jail," I find that it's derived from the Indo-
European root keu. The bountiful keu also yields
"to bend or turn," "a round, hollow object," "a
vessel," "to lie down on," "to burn," "brightly
shining," "swollen, strong and powerful." I think
this is Gaia.

If we, as a species, are going to survive in sanity,
we may have to also realize that Gaia is both
goddess and "jail" — and us. We language our-
selves into a being hell or heaven. ("Hell," pre-
dictably, the wonderful warm dark underworld,
also gets to us linguistically via the goddess
through the Proto- Indo-European root kel.)
Reconstructuring the essentials of the even more
remote "proto-language" I call GaiaSpeak may
well be my life's work. I know that the task is as
compelling as it is inextricably bound to my
search for a spiritual, yet inherently practical
internal Gaia consciousness.

I'll Stop here. As a writer, I can no longer ignore
the number of trees I am potentially sentencing.

Bcthe Hagens, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology and
Geography, Governors State University, Core Faculty, Union
Institute Graduate School.

POETRY

Margaret S. B. White

C OC LVPSO

TO COUSTEAU ON THE LOSS OF HIS SON
TO WATER

Jacques Cousteau, what do you think of the ocean now?

Your salty world, the Calypso fluidly dancing over it

toward the coordinates you meticulously plotted;

those charts you kept rolled inside long cardboard cylinders,

the kind gift paper comes on,

and each opening of the cylinder,

each unfurling of the chart was for you

like unwrapping a Christmas present

The joy as you squinted toward those places

you would find buried treasure — Atlantis or

a sunken Roman galleon;

the excitement as you pondered sharks

and built underwater cages to protect your divers

as they photographed them,

and photographers to photograph the photographers,

images of triple rows of razor teeth

flashing through the murk, gnawing bars;

the bars breaking, the divers shrinking back

to the far corners desperately jerking

the haul-up lines

And on deck the lean-bodied, barechested brown men,

their hands clenched fists holding rope,

their salt sweat and the sea salt mixed

to leave a white crust on the skin; the photographic eye

records as the biceps strain,

the forearms flex and bend,

the lats grow huge with blood and the weight of the cage;

they pull it up through brown,

through blue-green, through blue

against the enormous resistance

of water and still the shark batters the cage,

the dull snout comes closer to the diver

with every thrust of that dumb, massive head

Until the diver holds his camera like a shield

between himself and those joyful slicing teeth,

holds the camera with one hand while the other

tries to keep his oxygen line open,

tries to keep the shark from tangling the haul-up;

then after what seems like watching a death

in slow motion, the cage breaks the surface of the water

like an undiscovered geyser,

lines go slack, the men on deck fall back,

the cage dangles in space, free of water at last

but not yet of the shark; it makes one final try,

leaps into the clear, bright foreign air

then itself falls back, a part of the ocean again.

CDUSTEAU
50CIETY

Poetry by Margaret S. B. White

On deck the cage is surrounded

by members of your crew:

some help the diver out; he staggers into their arms

collapsing from the weight of the tanks,

the weight of his fear

and the cameras roll, record it all: you consoling,

Cousteau, the crew removing the tanks

and the absurd rubber suit.

Jean-Michel, your oldest son, examines the cage

for broken welds;

Philippe, the younger, stands aside

looks at the sea for some clue,

then turns to the camera, to us, to explain.

In the background, celebration and the opening

of beer

and we, who see this film on National Geographic,

knew it would have to end this way.

Ill

Now, Cousteau, your son is under ice

the super-insulation of the suit

protects him from the cold.

He floats: his body moves

with sluggish undulation

through breaks in icebergs; the mute

gazes of crystalline fish follow him

through the hollows of caves holding frozen

stalactites.

He swims through them;

each move, each turn, a place

he's never been,

nobody's ever seen; he is first.

The divers with cameras are next;

their underwater floodlights illuminate

the ice, cast tentative shadows

of each other against the iceberg's

submerged surface;

they record his discoveries, Cousteau.

they see as he sees — they see him see —

the polar bear, the humpback whale:

they capture his delight in the radiant ice,

the pale irridescence of it.

And when you watch your son, Cousteau,

when you see him in your element

through the projector's filament

do you wonder at his ease, his

shy grace; when he turns, do you strain your eyes

to see his face?

Now, he changes elements, Cousteau; he pilots

a seaplane toward Portugal.

No cameramen follow him this time,

although he is not alone:

seven others share the cabin of the plane.

It seems, suspended in space, caught

between ocean and sky, like a

bad compromise, this machine; suited neither

to water nor air.

Its pontoons hang like oxygen tanks, like

bombs;

they drag the plane toward land — and

the plane flies heavy above it

and almost gives up to gravity.

Your son takes it seriously, Cousteau:

like you, he eyes his maps;

he flies through clouds unrecorded

as icebergs, through lensless atoms

of sky; there is no film trace of

the journey he makes through this place:

it is not for posterity.

He flies toward the Tagus River,

the brown land below turning green;

in the distance, the Mediterranean

and the city of Alverca.

He makes his approach unbothered

as the surface of the river; he

has done this before: this voyage

no harder than all the others; air or water

to him did not matter, Cousteau,

although it did to you.

Poetry by Margaret S. B. White

ON THE CUTTING OF SOME TREES
For Barbara

We walk the forest floor
and fragrant sawdust, resin
oozing thickly from within,
sticks to the faded suede
of our boots like a new
kind of skin.

Above, skylarks fly in
puzzled arcs and seek the
branches where they once
made their nests and came
to rest before the sunset
turned to dark.

In this new meadowland we see
the jagged stumps of chain-
sawed oaks and watch as motes
of dust float upward
to an air once green with
hickory leaves, and hear a
brittle caw of mourning from
one lost crow.

We feel the forest cry and
then we turn and wade across
the almost silent creek to go.

A REPORT FROM THE
CONSERVATION CHAIR

Catharine Blair

This is your conservation chair speaking. I have
been doing some on the spot investigation of
environmental problems, beginning with two
weeks in Tuscon, Arizona where I found the
residents squandering water like it was going out
of style - grassy lawns kept green with under-
ground watering systems and kidney-shaped
pools on the back patios. There are no restrictions
whatsoever on watering. It only rains every two
months there!

On the Edisto River in South Carolina a dozen of
us canoed six days from Orangeburg to Collision
State Park, finding a timber company cutting
right up to the banks of the river. This river has
no public land other than the State Parks and
some poorly maintained county facilities which
had trash all over and no privies at all. The trip
was led by the Sierra Club's Wetlands Task Force
and the State's Water Resource Department. A
coalition of groups are working to have the
Edisto declared a state Wild and Scenic River and
to urge the state to purchase more riverfront
campsites. This is a classic blackwater stream
lined with tupelo, bald cypress, and black gum
trees which are full of warblers, barred owls,
pileated wood peckers, and Carolina wrens.

June; a paradise of breeding birds, grassland, and
woodland flowers. Lewis and Clark explored it
and Charley Russell painted their story. I didn't
find a thing wrong with the Great Falls environs.
It was absolutely beautiful!

Next was the Sierra Club's four-day International
Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Highlights
were David Brower, Time magazine's Charles
Alexander, Dave Foreman, and former U.S.
Representative John Sieberling. Members from as
far as Malaysia and the Inuits of Alaska joined
national Club officials from San Francisco.

In August I did six days of lake paddling in the
clear waters of the Lady Evelyn/Temagmami
region of Ontario. The loons called to us at night
and by day the chipmunks were very demanding
of our munchies of nuts and seeds. The scenery
was magnificent, the portages boulder-strewn.
This trip was led by Ralph Freese. Half of the fun
was visiting the voyageur sites along the way,
especially St. Marie among the Hurons and the
Wye Marsh Wildlife Center in Midland. We just
happened to be there when the 300th anniversary
of the Jesuit appearance in Canada was being
celebrated with the landing of several voyageur
canoes amid redcoat gun salutes and bagpipes.
They had started their paddle in Quebec City in
June.

I recommend this whole territory as an alterna-
tive to the Boundary Waters. It has the same
Canadian Shield, same moose and loons, same
good swimming waters, and excellent parks and
campgrounds, all with a historical touch, I might
add.

Catharine Blair is an environmentalist and canoeist who
monitors the U.S. Park systems for the Sierra club.

/ ••

In Montana on the Missouri River I found hun-
dreds of birds in two wildlife refuges and nature
conservancy sites. This is magnificent territory in

GREEN HOLDS NO RESPONSE

Sarah Probst

The clover grew tall by the roadside. This
was all I thought about as we drove. In-
formation signs snapped past the car.
They told me nothing. He had decided to
drive. His chlorine-blond hair was tied
back out of his way now and his olive
eyes were protected from the sun with
dark glasses. He spoke to me about the
greenhouse effect for almost an hour
before sleep took over. I dreamt about
killer radioactive vegetables and woke up
feeling calm. He talked to me for a while
about the miracle of trees and life and
peace. He offered me a mint. I wasn't
sure.

Two Book Reviews of The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific

Revolution

By Carolyn Merchant
Harper and Row, 1990

Reviewed by Lynn Lindvig

For those of us with an innate distrust of the
institution of science, this book will confirm our
darkest suspicions. Even for those with a healthy
dose of respect for science technology and prog-
ress, this book will leave us with doubts about
the foundation our technological society rests
upon. It is a meticulously researched account of
the paradigm shift that occurred during the
period we now call the scientific revolution in
Western thought during the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. This massive ideological shift
from an earth-centered organic view of the world
to one in which the earth becomes dead matter
spinning around the sun in a mechanistic uni-
verse did not occur overnight, nor did it occur
without a struggle. The struggle, and those
involved in it, are beautifully brought to life by
Carolyn Merchant, a professor of environmental
history, philosophy and ethics at Berkeley, in a
book that will take a preeminent place in the
field.

Before and during the Renaissance, life perme-
ated virtually every object from stones to hu-
mans. This animistic view was ancient wisdom
unchallenged by science since there was no body
of scientific knowledge which could be used to
differentiate animate from inanimate forms. The
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were redis-
covered and widely followed at this time. Plato
saw the earth as having a female soul and as the
source of all motion in the universe. He refers to
the earth as a "nurse" and this image is repeated
by later animists. Aristotle also saw the earth as
being female, although in matter only. The
spiritual and intellectual aspects of life were
assigned to the male principle. (This is where we
have the beginnings of the acceptance of nature
and the female sex as passive in Western
thought.)

Having a mother earth placed restraints on the
amount of digging, grazing, chopping and pollut-
ing a society could impose. This was the case
with "primitive" cultures like the American
Indians and held powerful sway until the ideo-
logical shift of the seventeenth century. A pri-
mary example of this attitude is given by Mer-
chant in her accounts of the opposition to min-

ing. Throughout history, mining had been seen
as a particular abomination against the nurturing
earth. Even to the Roman writers Pliny, Ovid and
Seneca, mining was seen as a violation of the
mother's womb and a display of man's greed.
Pliny believed that whatever was hidden beneath
the earth was concealed by the mother in her
infinite wisdom:

"For it is upon her surface, in fact, that she has
presented us with these substances, equally
with the cereals, bounteous and ever-ready, as
she is, in supplying us with all things for our
benefit! It is what is concealed from our view,
what is sunk beneath her surface, objects, in
fact, of no rapid formation, that urge us to our
ruin, that send us to the very depths of
hell.... when will be the end of thus exhausting
the earth, and to what point will avarice finally
penetrate!" (p. 30)

By the Renaissance, much forest had been de-
stroyed to make way for mines and to smelt iron
ore. Water pollution was also noted as a by-
product of mining. In the early 1400s Florence
passed laws to prohibit the dumping of lime into
the rivers because it was poisoning the fish.
Mining even came to be associated with human
lust, and digging into the earth was compared to
probing the secret places of a woman.

Merchant uses vivid examples from various
historical vantage points to demonstrate the
opposition to man's quest for precious metals.
The passages she has found and brought together
illuminate poignantly the struggle between
preserving nature and the onslaught of the
market economy in which nature becomes a
commodity. Although she gives examples such as
Pliny from Roman times, and does point out that
this struggle has been going on since prehistory,
the seventeenth century is the crucial turning
point which she discusses at length in the book
and where we find the basis of our technological
society.

By the seventeenth century, the pressure of a
rapidly expanding commercial market going up
against the organic world view was creating
tension at all levels of society, and was part of
the greater sense of chaos as the reformation
spread and religious sects appeared, such as the
Quakers, Huguenots, Anabaptists, and Lollards.
A common practice among them was a wider
role for women in religion. This threatened the
status quo; an old, ordered world was dying in

more ways than one. Land use shifted from
agrarian subsistence "commons" to profit-ori-
ented ventures owned by a single individual or
family. Peasants who had enjoyed use of commu-
nal land became displaced wage workers. Says
Merchant, "the fundamental social and intellec-
tual problem of the seventeenth century was one
of order." The basic tenet of Merchant's book is
that the theories of the scientific revolution are
based upon an insatiable need to impose order
upon an unruly, threatening time of change.

Power was naturally a main concern as well.
Since the Catholic church was no longer the
ultimate authority, power became secularized. In
order to bring back political and social stability, it
was wielded over the elements which caused
disorder; society being so hierarchical, power
came from the top down in a patriarchal model
where women and nature were seen as lower
forms at the bottom of the ladder. The Judeo-
Christian ethic of male dominance, along with
the concept of dominion over nature also found
in the Bible, spread to the secular world and
condoned the exploitation of nature for the
benefit of man in the rising market economy. The
radical sects with egalitarian views toward the
sexes or a Utopian ideology toward nature were
derided or persecuted; it is during this time that
the witch trials occurred. Since women were
associated with lower intellectual forms and the
female allied with mother nature, they were to
blame for the dark, passionate and chaotic side of
the world. Any woman viewed as powerful was
a renewed threat to the existing patriarchy.

Our scientifically constructed view of the world
around us, except for recent developments in
quantum physics, originates with the "fathers" of
science: Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, Sir
Francis Bacon, and slightly later, Sir Isaac New-
ton and Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz. Yet they
were a part of this social milieu. Merchant takes a
fresh look at them, with a critical eye cast toward
Bacon especially, who was upwardly mobile in
the King's service during the reign of James I of
England, the notorious witch hunter, and who
apparently appropriated his model of scientific
inquiry from the witch trials:

"For you have but to follow and as it were
hound nature in her wanderings and you will
be able when you like to lead and drive her af-
terward to the same place again. Neither am I
of opinion in this history of marvels that super-
stitious narratives of sorceries, witchcrafts,
charms, dreams, divinations, and the like,
where there is an assurance and clear evidence
of the fact, should be altogether excluded...

howsoever, the use and practice of such arts is
to be condemned, yet from the speculation and
consideration of them... a useful light may be
gained, not only for a true judgment of the
offenses of persons charged with such practices,
but likewise for the further disclosing of the
secrets of nature. Neither ought a man to make
scruple of entering and penetrating into these
holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth
is his whole object — as your majesty has
shown in your own example." (p. 168)

Bacon is generally credited with the separation of
science from theology. Until his influence, physi-
cal sciences were taught by theologians at the
English and European universities and God was
"immanent" in nature. Bacon took God away
from science, not by denying his existence which
would have been heresy, but by stating that God
existed outside of matter, which was passive and
acted upon by external force. Matter, thus nature,
could be acted upon in any fashion. Bacon spe-
cifically calls for open "dissection" and examina-
tion of nature whose secrets will benefit man-
kind.

For Descartes, matter was inert, "dead" and
"stupid" and could be broken down into par-
ticles which acted independently of each other,
moved by external force since they had no life in
and of themselves. The dominant metaphor of
these workings was the machine. The human
body was made to fit that metaphor of independ-
ent particles functioning regularly and following
mathematical laws. Descartes even viewed
animals as "beast machines," insensate. Mathe-
matics became the key to the universe and every-
thing could be reduced to mathematics and
understood rationally, without the unpredictabil-
ity of animism which imparted life to even the
smallest bodies of matter. Thomas Hobbes ex-
tended the machine metaphor to the body politic
in his Leviathan, in which human law and order
made sense out of the state of chaos that was
inherently found in nature.

Merchant explains the pervasiveness of the
machine metaphor, indeed even in our own time,
as being due to the fact that machines, like
windmills, fulling mills, pulleys, and clocks, were
becoming a large part of the daily life of Europe-
ans; working the land, hence contact with and
dependence on nature, was less a part.

As the mechanistic view took hold there was
opposition to the spirit of life being removed
from living things. In the generation following
Descartes et al., one arm of resistance came from
the Platonists at Cambridge University. Their
philosophy represents a compromise between

organicism and mechanism, according to Mer-
chant, and with them lie the roots of modern
ecology.

Henry More and Ralph Cudworth held a "mana-
gerial" view of nature. Conservation of natural
resources was necessary for the sake of human
progress, i.e. timber was needed for ships, so
depleting the forest made no sense. They be-
lieved the earth to be alive but of a "vegetative"
nature which put them at odds with Descartes
but did not put them in the same camp with the
animists. Nature was alive, but did not have a
will, therefore man still had dominion over
nature but the responsibility of stewardship to a
living earth. This ideology surfaces in twentieth
century ecology.

Not to be overlooked are the Quaker vitalists
Anne Conway and Francis Mercury Van
Helmont, who vehemently rejected Descartes'
separation of matter and spirit and indeed agreed
with the animists of centuries past that all matter
was infused with life. Conway wrote, "How can
it be, that any dead thing should proceed from
him, or be created by him, such as is mere body
or matter.. .It is truly said of one that God made
not death, and it is true that he made no dead
thing: For how can a dead thing depend on him
who is life and charity?" Although it would
appear that the mechanists won the struggle,
views like this were not utterly stamped out and
Conway herself corresponded with and influ-
enced the theories of the philosopher/mathemati-
cian Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz, who also
opposed the inertness of matter.

The Death of Nature was originally published in
1980. This edition contains a preface written in
1989 in which the author recounts the explosion
of the grass roots environmental movement of
the 1980s, a renewed interest in the cult of the
goddess and pagan, earth-oriented rituals, and
the spreading of the GAIA theory proposed by
atmospheric chemist James Lovelock in the late
1970s. All of this would indicate a growing
movement whose diverse parts show signs of
becoming galvanized against further abuse of the
earth.

The scientific revolution broke down the earth,
the human body, and the body politic into
mechanized parts functioning without unity or a
sense of interdependence. It is quite probable that
we are seeing this process in reverse. Holism has
crept into mainstream medicine, the social sci-
ences, and most importantly, environmental
science with the GAIA theory.

I urge anyone with an interest in the future of the
planet to read this book, in order to better under-

stand the basis of our current ecological crisis
and to grasp just how far back into history its
roots go. What we do with this knowledge of the
imperfections of our modern science and "prog-
ress" remains to be seen. It will be a future
chapter in Carolyn Merchant's story, one in
which, as she says, "the world must again be
turned upside down."

Lynn Ann Lindvig, a graduate of the College of
Communications at University of Illinois Champaign-
Urbana, currently works for a medical journal. She is a
member of Chicago Women in Publishing and is an editorial
consultant for The Creative Woman.

J A Journal

Hypatia / r:i;

OYPATIA, a journal founded hy members of the
Society for Women in Philosophy as a forum for
dialogue within the women's movement, is
dedicated to the publication of scholarly research

in feminist philosophy
and the only journal in
the country for
scholarly research at
the intersection of
philosophy and
women's studies.

1 Hypatia

SPECIAL ISSUE

' ,1 .

Triannual. Subscriptions: $25 individuals (one year), $48. 0C
individuals (two years), $40 institutions. Outside US, add SIC
per year for foreign surface postage. Send orders to Indiana
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Bloomington, IN 47405. Or call 812-855-9449.

Second Book Review on The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution

Reviewed By Margaret S. Matchett

Metaphors are shaped by experience; they also
form the basis and justification for action. A
metaphor can provide the framework not only
for the interpretation of observation but also for a
system of ethics. In The Death of Nature, Carolyn
Merchant juxtaposes two metaphors for nature,
both with ancient historical roots. On the one
hand, nature has been viewed as a living organ-
ism. This organic view can imply a deep respect
for nature and can entail constraints on activi-
ties — mining, deforestation, and the like —
which are seen as abuses of the earth. In contrast,
nature can be seen as an aggregate of lifeless
particle s — atoms, electrons, quarks — subject to
mechanistic and discoverable laws.

The Death of Nature focuses on the period from
1500 to 1700, during which the dominant meta-
phor shifted from organic to mechanical. Inter-
connected intellectual, scientific, technological,
economic, and political currents brought about
this shift. To the formidable task of describing
these currents, Merchant brings a wealth of
scholarship. The book presents fascinating mate-
rial, rewarding particularly for its insights into
the historical roots of the present ecological crisis.
As the book's subtitle — Women, Ecology, and the
Scientific Revolution — suggests, the author is also
concerned with the implications of world view
for the status of women. Here, too, she presents
interesting historical data, but this reader found
the attempt at synthesis not entirely persuasive,
for a reason that arises from a more general flaw
in the analysis.

Merchant asserts 1 : Central to the organic theory
was the identification of nature, especially the
earth, with a nurturing mother: a kindly, be-
neficent female who provided for the needs of
mankind in an ordered universe. But another
opposing image of nature as female was also
prevalent: wild and uncontrollable nature that
could render violence, storm, droughts, and
general chaos. Both were identified with the
female sex and were projections of human
perceptions onto the external world. The sec-
ond image, nature as disorder, called forth an
important modern idea, that of power over
nature. Two new ideas, those of mechanism
and of the domination and mastery of nature,
became core concepts of the modern world.

Here, as elsewhere, the author equates mecha-
nism with domination — domination of the
natural world and, by extension, of people —
women in particular.

It is true that the Scientific Revolution and the
technology associated with it gave rise to a far
greater dominion of the material world than had
been known before. However, efforts at control
of nature are much older than the Scientific
Revolution. We may seek to control natural
forces by levers and pulleys, semiconductors and
atomic piles, but the use of magic and incanta-
tion, reaching far into the past, likewise repre-
sents an attempt to control. Similarly, hierarchical
social systems far antedate Merchant's period.
Dichotomies, however seductive as tools of
thought, must be used with care. The organic and
mechanical metaphors are both broadly inclusive
and both are susceptible to changes of emphasis
and to restatement. Indeed, Merchant recognizes
this when she deals with history, showing the
interplay of philosophies and the linkages be-
tween the two metaphors: "Some philosophers
have argued that the two frameworks are funda-
mentally incommensurable. Although such a per-
ception of the dichotomy is too extreme..." 2
One cannot quarrel with a historian's decision to
study a single time period, nor can one deny, in
the face of much that is enlightening in this very
book, that history's lessons are of value today. It
is possible, however, to extrapolate too far. The
mechanism Merchant describes was shaped by
advances in physics, the dominant science of her
period. Later advances in other fields — evolu-
tion and cell biology, as well as the social sci-
ences — have supplied abundant material rele-
vant to a contemporary world view. (In The Lives
of a Cell, Lewis Thomas reports finding at least
momentary satisfaction in seeing the world as
most resembling a single cell.) To regard an
organic view of nature as the only source of
correction for modern ills — the destruction of
the environment, the exploitation of women and
minorities — is to pursue the dichotomy beyond
its intrinsic reach.

In analyzing two contrasting systems of thought,
Merchant challenges her readers to reexamine the
assumptions of modern society. She reminds us
that there are alternative ways of looking at the
world. By a holistic approach to her material, she
makes vivid the value of such an approach. To
say that there are more alternatives to be consid-
ered and more lessons to be learned is in no way
to minimize her contribution.

1 The Death of Nature, p. 2.

2 Ibid, p. 289.

Dr. Matchett taught mathematics for many years at the
Laboratory Schools of the University of Chicago.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Helen,

The Soviet Women issue of the Creative Woman
came yesterday and I have read it from cover to
cover. It is beautifully done and very moving.
Sharon Tennison's very Jungian introversion at
35 and subsequent confrontation of the human
dilemma was marvelous preparation for her
efforts to bring together the women of Russia
and America. It is impossible to generalize
meaningfully — each woman interviewed pre-
sented an individual outlook, but the overall
impression is of self-knowledge and maturity.
The reprinted article on Anna Akhmatova was
especially interesting to me because I have so
long thought of her as the leading Russian poet
of the century without really knowing much
about her. What a wonderful writer she was!

Love, Allegra

(Dr. Allegra Stewart is a scholar of language and literature.
She lives in Indianapolis.)

Dear Ms. Hughes:

What a delight to receive your letter of January 9
and the enclosed copy of your fall 1989 edition:
"Toward Planethood!"

Many thanks for your thoughtfulness in sending
your very interesting and artistic magazine. I
hope you will get a million new subscribers -
attracted not merely by the excellence of your
presentations but by the free copy of our little
book. If we can harness the energy of American
women - nothing can block the creation of a
more humane and peaceful world.

With appreciation and every good wish,

Benjamin B. Ferencz
School of Law
Pace University
New York

FREE copies of Planethood are still avail-
able with each new subscription or gift
subscription.

"HOW CAN I HELP? WHAT CAN I DO?"

Dear Editor,

I'm writing about the idea I spoke of at the
IWWG environmental seminar at the Women's
Museum in Washington, D.C. The "Tupperware
Parties" for recycled paper products and biode-
gradable products has taken a new turn in the
Social Action group of my church. We decided to
hold an Earth Day Party on Earth Day, April 22,
or the Sunday before or after, after church,
during the coffee hour. We plan to display
samples from two companies whose catalogues I
have, and have people who are interested sign
up for orders. Here are the addresses of the two
companies:

Earth Care Paper, Inc. Madison, WI 53704 (608) 256-
5522

Seventh Generation Products for a Health Planet 10
Farrell Street South Burlington, VT 05403 (800) 456-
1177 (24 hours)

I have sent for about $250-worth of products
which we will use as samples. Enough Christmas
and birthday presents for a year, plus many
items I will use myself! Kitchen and bathroom
items, children's books and games, notes and
cards, office paper, stationery, etc. The catalogues
give much useful information, and Earth Care
prints educational pamphlets. Both companies
will send you extra catalogues. Perhaps they will
supply you with samples if you tell them your
plans and purposes. Both companies give a
percentage of their profits to environmental
organizations. Earth Care is 10%, I believe.
I haven't given up my idea of personal at-home
parties for other friends whom I work with on
various community committees.

I think we should get our church to use recycled
paper in the office. Maybe our Social Action
group will present them with a gift of some
reams of paper of different qualities, to get them
started. (We Unitarians are wordy.)

I think this idea has all kinds of possibilities. It's
educational and consciousness-raising, as well as
encouraging to companies to expand production
of less expensive environmentally safe products.
Go with it, if you can! All your ideas and enthu-
siasm and intelligent concern were such an
inspiration!

Jean Junge

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Helen:

Just finished reading your issue on the Soviet
Woman and couldn't help but write to you.

I was very moved by the different accounts of the
womens' lives, the periods of history they
described and the depth of feeling each
displayed. But, every now and again, I had to
look at the cover to see if the title of the issue
was not the Russian Woman. Even Sharon
Tennison in her introduction seemed to be
talking primarily about Russian women.

What you published was excellent, but either the
title was somewhat misleading or the issue was
not diverse enough. When you consider that only
51% of the population in the Soviet Union is
Russian, the representation of the other 49% was
far from complete.

We seem to forget under what conditions the
other fourteen republics came to be part of the
Soviet Union and how most of them have
popular front movements which are leading
them toward total independence from this same
Soviet Union.

My family left Latvia when I was five years old.
As a child I remember sitting spellbound while
listening to grownups talk late into the night
about events in the war (both WWI & WWII);
and when I look back over my own early
childhood I suppose one could say I had a few
interesting experiences also. Through it all I have
developed a very strong sense of national origin.

Last summer I made my second trip back to
Latvia since my family fled from there in 1944. I
came away with many impressions. The first and
foremost was how passionately Latvians want to
be independent from the Soviet Union.

In her poem "Courage" Anna Akhmatova writes:
"We will preserve you, Russian Speech, from
servitude in foreign chains". And yet, Russians
seem to want to keep other languages and
speeches in servitude to them. The Latvian
province of Latgale is so saturated with Russian
people that many times the Latvian people are
ridiculed on the streets for speaking their own
language.

While on my trip, I took a picture of a woven
tapestry depicting Latvian women in their
regional folk costumes. It appears as though they
are singing a song which tells of unifying the
whole country on both sides of the river
Daugava. One woman stands apart from the
rest, she is naked and there is a picket fence

separating her from the others. She is from the
township of Abrene which has been so
Russianized that the region, in this case
represented by the naked woman, has been
stripped of its identity.

In another poem, " I Am Not One of Those Who
Left the Land...", Anna Akhmatova writes:
"Survely the reckoning will be made after the
passing of this cloud." It seems to me that
fourteen republics are now waiting for this
reckoning and ironically, for most of them, the
clouds have been the Russian people - and they
will pass.

Women all over the world have enough in
common that they can understand one another
and even become good friends. I have no doubt
that I could be very good friends with any one of
the women you interviewed. They have a depth
of understanding that transcends national
boundaries. Larissa Vasilyeva probably speaks
for most of them when she says "Only we didn't
know - we were in ignorance of the ways of our
leaders, what secrets they kept, what horrible
things they did."

I find that many commentators also don't know.
They especially don't know the many negative
ways that Russian people outside of Russia
proper assert themselves; the many privileges
they allow themselves at the expense of the local
population.

It seems to me that nations could learn a lot from
the simple psychology our mothers taught us: "If
you want other children to play with you, you
must be nice to them, otherwise they will go
away." Well, to noone's surprise, the Baltic
countries have already declared their intention to
"go away." Certainly, on an individual level,
there is still time to take the advice of our
mothers and become friends. The enormity of
what can be gained in that approach boggles the
mind.

I look forward to your next issue.

Sincerely,

Inta Sraders
Glenwood, IL

EDITOR' S COLUMN

A Little Gaia-talk among friends

So we're all sitting around chewing our
Rainforest Crunch. "Mmh. Delicious."

"Sublime!"

"Do we have to rot our teeth to save the
rainforest?"

"Here - take some super dental floss."

"How does eating this candy really help?"

"It creates a market for rainforest products.. .in
this case, Brazil nuts... that are harvested without
clearing the forest."

"Why not clear the forest? WE did it to North
America!"

"We need the oxygen produced by the great
tropical rainforest and the rest of the planet's
trees busily doing photosynthesis, we need it to
balance the depletion of the ozone layer, to
combat the trend to global warming, and
therefore to maintain the conditions necessary to
sustain life."

"Even more, we need it to conserve biotic
diversity. Immense numbers of species live in the
forests, identified and not-yet-identified."

"Many potential uses of these threatened species
may be lost forever, including medicines."

"Forest land is quickly exhausted after clearing.
The forest floor is not suitable for farming, and
after a couple of years of using it for grazing, it is
depleted even for that use and reverts to desert."

"So: we should eat less beef. Demand for beef
drives this process." "Right. Eat Rainforest
Crunch!"

"I still say it's hypocritical of us to lecture South
Americans on saving their forests when we
North Americans have destroyed so much of
ours."

"And we're still doing it! Cutting down the
ancient forests, all that is left of our magnificent
heritage. It's a war between intelligence and
greed."

"And we're using more than our share of the
earth's energy resources. We complain about
over-population in the Third World when one
baby born in the U.S. will consume fifteen times
more energy resources than a baby born in India
will consume. We have met the enemy and it is
us, as Pogo says."

"We have to change a lot of things about our
habits and way of life if this war on behalf of
Gaia is to be won."

"So is our official policy now echofeminism?"

"Echofeminism? Does that mean you say
everything twice?" "Starhawk pronounces it
EEkofeminist..."

"EEK! a feminist!"

"Have you heard The New Confessional?"

"Let's have it."

"It goes like this:

'Bless me Mother for I have sinned. I used five
plastic bags at the grocery store this week.'

That's alright, my child. Just say fifteen Hail
Gaia's and next time carry a canvas bag.'"

Go in peace.

HEH

This issue of
The Creative Woman

was printed on
recycled paper

Artwork this page

"Gaia" by Deborah Koff-Chapin

Signed color photographic prints

available from

IN HER IMAGE

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3208 South East Hawthorne

Portland, OR 97214

503/231-3762

Portfolio of Prints and Book Available:
At the Pool of Wonder: Dreams and
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202/221-8751

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